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Title: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Author: Laurence Sterne

Release Date: October 25, 1997 [eBook #1079]
[Most recently updated: October 27, 2021]

Language: English


Produced by: Sue Asscher, Stephen Radcliffe and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRISTRAM SHANDY ***




THE
LIFE AND OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY,
GENTLEMAN

by Laurence Sterne

Contents

 Volume I.
 Volume II.
 Volume III.
 Volume IV.

Laurence Sterne

Ταράσσει τοὺς Ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ Πράγματα,
Ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν Πραγμάτων Δόγματα.



TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
M r.   P I T T.

S I R,

NEVER 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.

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.

I am, GREAT SIR,
(and, what is more to your Honour)
I am, GOOD SIR,
Your Well-wisher, and
most humble Fellow-subject,

T H E  A U T H O R.




THE
LIFE and OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent.

C H A P.   I

I WISH 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.

Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the
clock?—Good G—! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking
care to moderate his voice at the same time,——Did ever woman, since
the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?
Pray, what was your father saying?————Nothing.

C H A P. II

———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 HOMUNCULUS, and conducted him safe to the place
destined for his reception.

The HOMUNCULUS, 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 BEING
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
HOMUNCULUS 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 England.—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 Tully, Puffendorf, or
the best ethick writers allow to arise out of that state and relation.

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.

C H A P.   III

TO my uncle Mr. Toby Shandy 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 Toby 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:—But
alas! continued he, shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a
tear which was trickling down his cheeks, My Tristram’s misfortunes
began nine months before ever he came into the world.

—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. Toby Shandy, who
had been often informed of the affair,—understood him very well.

C H A P. IV

I KNOW 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.

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 Pilgrim’s Progress itself—and in
the end, prove the very thing which Montaigne 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 Horace says, ab Ovo.

Horace, 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. Horace’s
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.

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.

——————Shut the door.—————— I was begot in the night betwixt the first
Sunday and the first Monday in the month of March, 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.

My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey 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
Sunday-night of every month throughout the whole year,—as certain as
ever the Sunday-night 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 Toby, 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.

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—& vice
versa:——Which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious Locke, 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.

But this by the bye.

Now it appears by a memorandum in my father’s pocket-book, which now
lies upon the table, “That on Lady-day, which was on the 25th of the
same month in which I date my geniture,——my father set upon his journey
to London, with my eldest brother Bobby, to fix him at
Westminster school;” and, as it appears from the same authority,
“That he did not get down to his wife and family till the second week
in May 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.

———But pray, Sir, What was your father doing all December, January,
and February?——Why, Madam,—he was all that time afflicted with a
Sciatica.

C H A P. V

ON the fifth day of November, 1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as
near nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have
expected,—was I Tristram Shandy, 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 Jupiter or Saturn, 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 Venus) 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 Flanders;—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 HERO sustained.

C H A P. VI

IN the beginning of the last chapter, I informed you exactly when I
was born; but I did not inform you how. No, 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.

—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.—O diem praeclarum!—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.

C H A P. VII

IN 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 world,
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 English 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 rights, members, and
appurtenances whatsoever.

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 Formula of Didius 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.

I own I never could envy Didius in these kinds of fancies of his:—But
every man to his own taste.—Did not Dr. Kunastrokius, 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 Solomon
himself,—have they not had their HOBBY-HORSES;—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 HOBBY-HORSE 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?

C H A P. VIII

—De gustibus non est disputandum;—that is, there is no disputing
against HOBBY-HORSES; 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.

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 HOBBY-HORSE, with all his
fraternity, at the Devil.

    “My Lord,
I MAINTAIN 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,

My Lord,
Your Lordship’s most obedient,
and most devoted,
and most humble servant,
TRISTRAM SHANDY.”

C H A P. IX

I SOLEMNLY 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.

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.

——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.

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.

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 design, 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 HOBBY-HORSE, (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 tout
ensemble.

Be pleased, my good Lord, to order the sum to be paid into the hands of
Mr. Dodsley, 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, De gustibus non est
disputandum, and whatever else in this book relates to HOBBY-HORSES,
but no more, shall stand dedicated to your Lordship.—The rest I
dedicate to the Moon, who, by the bye, of all the PATRONS or MATRONS I
can think of, has most power to set my book a-going, and make the world
run mad after it.

Bright Goddess,
If thou art not too busy with CANDID and Miss CUNEGUND’S affairs,—take
Tristram Shandy’s under thy protection also.

C H A P. X

WHATEVER 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.

The world at that time was pleased to determine the matter otherwise.

Lay down the book, and I will allow you half a day to give a probable
guess at the grounds of this procedure.

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 Rosinante, 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
Rosinante was broken-winded; and that, moreover, Rosinante, as is
the happiness of most Spanish horses, fat or lean,—was undoubtedly a
horse at all points.

I know very well that the HERO’S 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 Rosinante’s continency (as may
be demonstrated from the adventure of the Yanguesian 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.

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 Quixote’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 HUMILITY herself
could have bestrided.

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, poudré
d’or,—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.

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.

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 de vanitate mundi et fugâ sæculi, 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.

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.

What the loss in such a balance might amount to, communibus annis, 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.

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.

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.

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 La Mancha, 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

C H A P. XI

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.”

This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of
the Yorick’s family, and their religious preservation of these
records I quote, which do farther inform us, That the family was
originally of Danish extraction, and had been transplanted into
England as early as in the reign of Horwendillus, king of Denmark,
in whose court, it seems, an ancestor of this Mr. Yorick’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.

It has often come into my head, that this post could be no other than
that of the king’s chief Jester;—and that Hamlet’s Yorick, in our
Shakespeare, many of whose plays, you know, are founded upon
authenticated facts, was certainly the very man.

I have not the time to look into Saxo-Grammaticus’s Danish 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.

I had just time, in my travels through Denmark with Mr. Noddy’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.

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.

This is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to Yorick’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
Danish 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 gaité de cœur
about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put
together. With all this sail, poor Yorick 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 Fracas:——For, to speak the truth, Yorick 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.

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 French wit had long ago defined it,—viz. A mysterious carriage of
the body to cover the defects of the mind;—which definition of
gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence, would say, deserved to be
wrote in letters of gold.

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.
Yorick 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 English 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 bon mot, or to be enlivened throughout
with some drollery or humour of expression, it gave wings to Yorick’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.

What were the consequences, and what was Yorick’s catastrophe
thereupon, you will read in the next chapter.

C H A P. XII

THE Mortgager and Mortgagee differ the one from the other, not more
in length of purse, than the Jester and Jestee 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 Homer’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.

As the reader (for I hate your ifs) has a thorough knowledge of human
nature, I need not say more to satisfy him, that my HERO 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
Eugenius’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.

Eugenius 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 Yorick, 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,—Eugenius would then go on with his lecture upon discretion
in words to this purpose, though somewhat better put together.

Trust me, dear Yorick, 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.

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.

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, CRUELTY and COWARDICE,
twin ruffians, hired and set on by MALICE 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, 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.

Yorick 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 Eugenius had
foreboded, was put in execution all at once,—with so little mercy on
the side of the allies,—and so little suspicion in Yorick, 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.

Yorick, 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.

What inclined Eugenius to the same opinion was as follows:

A few hours before Yorick breathed his last, Eugenius stept in with
an intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his
drawing Yorick’s curtain, and asking how he felt himself, Yorick
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 Eugenius, with tears trickling
down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke.—I
hope not, Yorick, said he.——Yorick replied, with a look up, and a
gentle squeeze of Eugenius’s hand, and that was all,—but it cut
Eugenius to his heart.—Come,—come, Yorick, quoth Eugenius, 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!——Yorick laid
his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head;—For my part,
continued Eugenius, crying bitterly as he uttered the words,—I
declare I know not, Yorick, how to part with thee, and would gladly
flatter my hopes, added Eugenius, 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, Eugenius, quoth Yorick, taking off his
night-cap as well as he could with his left hand,—his right being still
grasped close in that of Eugenius,—I beseech thee to take a view of
my head.—I see nothing that ails it, replied Eugenius. Then, alas! my
friend, said Yorick, 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 Sancho
Pança, 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.”——Yorick’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 Cervantick tone;——and as he spoke it, Eugenius 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 Shakespeare said of
his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar!

Eugenius 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. Yorick followed Eugenius with his eyes to the
door,—he then closed them, and never opened them more.

tombstone

He lies buried in the corner of his church-yard, in the parish of ———,
under a plain marble slab, which his friend Eugenius, 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.

Alas, poor YORICK!

Ten times a day has Yorick’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,

Alas, poor YORICK!

C H A P. XIII

IT 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.

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 world,——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.

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 world;——which, betwixt you and me,
and in spite of all the gentlemen-reviewers in Great Britain, 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.

C H A P. XIV

UPON 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 Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb, 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
Rome all the way to Loretto, 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
    Accounts to reconcile:
    Anecdotes to pick up:
    Inscriptions to make out:
    Stories to weave in:
    Traditions to sift:
    Personages to call upon:
    Panegyricks to paste up at this door;

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 when it
happen’d, but not how;—so that you see the thing is yet far from
being accomplished.

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.

C H A P. XV

THE 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.

“And this Indenture further witnesseth, That the said Walter Shandy,
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 Walter Shandy and Elizabeth Mollineux 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 John Dixon, and James
Turner, 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 Walter Shandy, merchant, shall have left off
business before the time or times, that the said Elizabeth Mollineux
shall, according to the course of nature, or otherwise, have left off
bearing and bringing forth children;—and that, in consequence of the
said Walter Shandy having so left off business, he shall in despight,
and against the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the said
Elizabeth Mollineux,—make a departure from the city of London, in
order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at Shandy Hall, 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 Elizabeth Mollineux shall happen to be enceint with
child or children severally and lawfully begot, or to be begotten, upon
the body of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, during her said
coverture,—he the said Walter Shandy 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
Elizabeth Mollineux’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 John Dixon, and James
Turner, Esqrs. or assigns,—upon TRUST 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 Elizabeth Mollineux, 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 Elizabeth Mollineux, and the child or children which she
shall be then and there enceint and pregnant with,—unto the city of
London; 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 Elizabeth Mollineux
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 Elizabeth Mollineux, 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 London, as she at her own will and pleasure,
notwithstanding her present coverture, and as if she was a femme sole
and unmarried,—shall think fit.—And this Indenture further witnesseth,
That for the more effectually carrying of the said covenant into
execution, the said Walter Shandy, merchant, doth hereby grant,
bargain, sell, release, and confirm unto the said John Dixon, and
James Turner, 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 John Dixon, and James Turner,
Esqrs. by him the said Walter Shandy, 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 Shandy, 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 Shandy aforesaid, and all and every the tenths, tythes,
glebe-lands.”——In three words,——“My mother was to lay in, (if she chose
it) in London.”

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 Toby Shandy;—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 London
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, toties quoties, 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.

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.

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.

C H A P. XVI

MY 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 September, 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 London, upon a Tom
Fool’s errand, in any other month of the whole year, he should not
have said three words about it.”

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 Bobby 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.”

From Stilton, all the way to Grantham, 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 Sunday;——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.

From Grantham, till they had cross’d the Trent, 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 weakness 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.

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
Toby, he would have tired out the patience of any flesh alive.

C H A P. XVII

THOUGH 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 Toby’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.

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.

C H A P. XVIII

AS 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. Manningham 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 March 9, 1759,——that my dear, dear Jenny,
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.

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 Shandy-Hall.——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.
Shandy, 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. Shandy 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.”

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.

He was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject had
unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of Queen
Elizabeth’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 current was not the image he took most delight in,—a
distemper 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.

There was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties by
French politicks or French 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, The Lord
have mercy upon us all.

My father was never able to give the history of this distemper,—without
the remedy along with it.

“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.”

“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 France? Whence is it that the few remaining
Chateaus 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 French
man lives or dies.”

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.

In this point he was entirely of Sir Robert Filmer’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.

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 Te Deum. 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 Toby Shandy in the back
parlour,—for which he was to be paid five guineas.

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 Jenny,—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 Jenny 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 Jenny! 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 Jenny
may be my friend.—Friend!—My friend.—Surely, Madam, a friendship
between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported without———Fy! Mr.
Shandy:—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 French 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.

C H A P. XIX

I WOULD 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.

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.

The hero of Cervantes 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 DULCINEA’s name, in
shedding lustre upon them, than my father had on those of TRISMEGISTUS
or ARCHIMEDES, on the one hand—or of NYKY and SIMKIN on the other. How
many CÆSARS and POMPEYS, 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 NICODEMUS’D
into nothing?

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 BILLY, Sir!—would you, for
the world, have called him JUDAS?—Would you, my dear Sir, he would say,
laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address,—and in
that soft and irresistible piano of voice, which the nature of the
argumentum ad hominem absolutely requires,—Would you, Sir, if a Jew
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.

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 JUDAS,—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.

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
NATURE might have stood up and said,—“This man is eloquent.”—In short,
whether he was on the weak or the strong side of the question, ’twas
hazardous in either case to attack him.—And yet, ’tis strange, he had
never read Cicero, nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Isocrates, nor
Aristotle, nor Longinus, amongst the antients;—nor Vossius, nor
Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby, amongst the moderns;—and what
is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or
spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon
Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius or any Dutch logician or
commentator;—he knew not so much as in what the difference of an
argument ad ignorantiam, and an argument ad hominem consisted; so
that I well remember, when he went up along with me to enter my name at
Jesus College in ****,—it was a matter of just wonder with my worthy
tutor, and two or three fellows of that learned society,—that a man who
knew not so much as the names of his tools, should be able to work
after that fashion with them.

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

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

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 Ponto or Cupid
for their puppy-dog.

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.

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. Jack, Dick, and Tom 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. Bob, 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
Epsom, when it was given him,—he would oft-times thank Heaven it was
no worse. Andrew was something like a negative quantity in Algebra
with him;—’twas worse, he said, than nothing.—William stood pretty
high:——Numps again was low with him:—and Nick, he said, was the
DEVIL.

But of all names in the universe he had the most unconquerable aversion
for TRISTRAM;—he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of
any thing in the world,—thinking it could possibly produce nothing in
rerum natura, 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 EPIPHONEMA, or rather EROTESIS, 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 Tristram, performing any thing
great or worth recording?—No,—he would say,—TRISTRAM!—The thing is
impossible.

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 DISSERTATION simply upon the word
Tristram,—shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the
grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.

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 TRISTRAM!—Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which,
to his ears, was unison to Nincompoop, 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.

C H A P. XX

——How could you, Madam, be so inattentive in reading the last chapter?
I told you in it, That my mother was not a papist.——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 Pliny the younger affirm, “That he never read
a book so bad, but he drew some profit from it.” The stories of
Greece and Rome, run over without this turn and application,—do
less service, I affirm it, than the history of Parismus and
Parismenus, or of the Seven Champions of England, read with it.

———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 necessary I should be
born before I was christen’d.” Had my mother, Madam, been a Papist,
that consequence did not follow.[1]

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.

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.

MEMOIRE presenté à Messieurs les
Docteurs de SORBONNE[2]

UN Chirurgien Accoucheur, represente à Messieurs les Docteurs de
SORBONNE, 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 petite canulle, 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.

R E P O N S E

LE 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 Jesus
Christ, comme ils l’enseignent. S. Thomas, 3 part. quæst. 88 artic.
11. 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. Thomas 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: 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. 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
Jesus Christ 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
sous condition; & 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
sous condition, s’il vient heureusement au monde.

Déliberé en Sorbonne, le 10 Avril, 1733.

A. LE MOYNE.
L. DE ROMIGNY.
DE MARCILLY.

Mr. Tristram Shandy’s compliments to Messrs. Le Moyne, De Romigny,
and De Marcilly; 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
HOMUNCULI at once, slapdash, by injection, would not be a shorter and
safer cut still; on condition, as above, That if the HOMUNCULI do well,
and come safe into the world after this, that each and every of them
shall be baptized again (sous condition)——And provided, in the second
place, That the thing can be done, which Mr. Shandy apprehends it
may, par le moyen d’une petite canulle, and sans faire aucune tort
au pere.

 [1] The Romish Rituals direct the baptizing of the child, in cases
 of danger, before 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 Sorbonne, by a deliberation held amongst them, April 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,—par le moyen d’une
 petite canulle,—Anglicè a squirt.—’Tis very strange that St.
 Thomas Aquinas, 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 La chose
 impossible,—“Infantes in maternis uteris existentes (quoth St.
 Thomas!) baptizari possunt nullo modo.”—O Thomas! Thomas!

    If the reader has the curiosity to see the question upon baptism
    by injection, as presented to the Doctors of the Sorbonne, with
    their consultation thereupon, it is as follows.

 [2] Vide Deventer. Paris Edit. 4to, 1734, p. 366.

C H A P. XXI

——I WONDER 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 Toby,——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.

I think, replied my uncle Toby, 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 Toby’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.

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
France, 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 William’s reign,—when the great Dryden, in writing one of his
long prefaces, (if I mistake not) most fortunately hit upon it. Indeed
toward the latter end of queen Anne, the great Addison 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, March 26, 1759,
and betwixt the hours of nine and ten in the morning.

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 ical)
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.

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, As war begets poverty; poverty
peace,——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.

———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.——

But I forget my uncle Toby, whom all this while we have left knocking
the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe.

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 SHANDY FAMILY were of an original
character throughout:——I mean the males,—the females had no character
at all,—except, indeed, my great aunt DINAH, 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.

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 Toby. 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 SHANDY FAMILY 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
Fescue,—or in the decisive manner or Tacitus, 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.

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:

My uncle TOBY SHANDY, 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 Toby 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.

You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle Toby 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.

I wish I could say so,—for unless it was with his sister-in-law, my
father’s wife and my mother——my uncle Toby 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 Toby’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 Toby 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 DINAH 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 Toby’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.

My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my uncle
Toby, 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 Toby’s heart easy in this, or any
other point. But this lay out of his power.

——My father, as I told you was a philosopher in
grain,—speculative,—systematical;—and my aunt Dinah’s affair was a
matter of as much consequence to him, as the retrogradation of the
planets to Copernicus:—The backslidings of Venus in her orbit
fortified the Copernican system, called so after his name; and the
backslidings of my aunt Dinah in her orbit, did the same service in
establishing my father’s system, which, I trust, will for ever
hereafter be called the Shandean System, after his.

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,
Copernicus, 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.—Amicus Plato, my father would say,
construing the words to my uncle Toby, as he went along, Amicus
Plato; that is, DINAH was my aunt;—sed magis amica veritas—but TRUTH
is my sister.

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.

For God’s sake, my uncle Toby would cry,——and for my sake, and for
all our sakes, my dear brother Shandy,—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 Toby 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 Toby would answer,—every such instance is downright MURDER, let
who will commit it.——There lies your mistake, my father would
reply;——for, in Foro Scientiæ there is no such thing as MURDER,——’tis
only DEATH, brother.

My uncle Toby would never offer to answer this by any other kind of
argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of
Lillebullero.——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.

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 Argumentum ad Verecundiam, ex
Absurdo, ex Fortiori, 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 TREASURY of the Ars Logica,
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.

I do, therefore, by these presents, strictly order and command, That it
be known and distinguished by the name and title of the Argumentum
Fistulatorium, and no other;—and that it rank hereafter with the
Argumentum Baculinum and the Argumentum ad Crumenam, and for ever
hereafter be treated of in the same chapter.

As for the Argumentum Tripodium, which is never used but by the woman
against the man;—and the Argumentum ad Rem, 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.

C H A P. XXII

THE learned Bishop Hall, I mean the famous Dr. Joseph Hall, who was
Bishop of Exeter in King James the First’s reign, tells us in one
of Decads, at the end of his divine art of meditation, imprinted at
London, in the year 1610, by John Beal, dwelling in
Aldersgate-street, “That it is an abominable thing for a man to
commend himself;”——and I really think it is so.

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.

This is precisely my situation.

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 Great Britain; yet I constantly take care
to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in my
absence.

I was just going, for example, to have given you the great out-lines of
my uncle Toby’s most whimsical character;—when my aunt Dinah 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 Toby’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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

——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.

C H A P. XXIII

I HAVE a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very
nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy.—Accordingly I set off
thus:

If the fixture of Momus’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.

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 Mercury (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.

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.

Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has been forced to
take, to do this thing with exactness.

Some, for instance, draw all their characters with
wind-instruments.—Virgil takes notice of that way in the affair of
Dido and Æneas;—but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame;—and,
moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the
Italians pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of
one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or
piano 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
ad populum:—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.

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.

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 Non-naturals.—Why the
most natural actions of a man’s life should be called his
Non-naturals,—is another question.

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[3] of the brush have shewn in taking
copies.—These, you must know, are your great historians.

One of these you will see drawing a full length character against the
light;—that’s illiberal,—dishonest,—and hard upon the character of the
man who sits.

Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in the
Camera;—that is most unfair of all, because, there you are sure to
be represented in some of your most ridiculous attitudes.

To avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you my uncle
Toby’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
Alps;—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
Toby’s character from his HOBBY-HORSE.

 [3] Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures
 mechanically, and in any proportion.

C H A P. XXIV

IF I was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all patience
for my uncle Toby’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.

A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, 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 HOBBY-HORSE,—by long journies and much friction, it so happens,
that the body of the rider is at length fill’d as full of
HOBBY-HORSICAL 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.

Now the HOBBY-HORSE which my uncle Toby always rode upon, was in my
opinion an HOBBY-HORSE well worth giving a description of, if it was
only upon the score of his great singularity;—for you might have
travelled from York to Dover,—from Dover to Penzance in
Cornwall, and from Penzance to York 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 HOBBY-HORSE 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 Toby use no
other argument to prove his HOBBY-HORSE was a HOBBY-HORSE indeed, but
by getting upon his back and riding him about;—leaving the world, after
that, to determine the point as it thought fit.

In good truth, my uncle Toby mounted him with so much pleasure, and
he carried my uncle Toby so well,——that he troubled his head very
little with what the world either said or thought about it.

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 Toby came by him.

C H A P. XXV

THE wound in my uncle Toby’s groin, which he received at the siege of
Namur, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient
he should return to England, in order, if possible, to be set to
rights.

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 os pubis, and the outward edge of that part of
the coxendix called the os illium,——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 Toby’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.

My father at that time was just beginning business in London, and had
taken a house;—and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted
between the two brothers,—and that my father thought my uncle Toby
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 Toby, and chat an hour by his bed-side.

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.

These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle Toby 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.

What these perplexities of my uncle Toby 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.

C H A P. XXVI

I HAVE begun a new book, on purpose that I might have room enough to
explain the nature of the perplexities in which my uncle Toby was
involved, from the many discourses and interrogations about the siege
of Namur, where he received his wound.

I must remind the reader, in case he has read the history of King
William’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
English and Dutch upon the point of the advanced counterscarp,
between the gate of St. Nicolas, which inclosed the great sluice or
water-stop, where the English were terribly exposed to the shot of
the counter-guard and demi-bastion of St. Roch: The issue of which
hot dispute, in three words, was this; That the Dutch lodged
themselves upon the counter-guard,—and that the English made
themselves masters of the covered-way before St. Nicolas-gate,
notwithstanding the gallantry of the French officers, who exposed
themselves upon the glacis sword in hand.

As this was the principal attack of which my uncle Toby was an
eye-witness at Namur,——the army of the besiegers being cut off, by
the confluence of the Maes and Sambre, from seeing much of each
other’s operations,——my uncle Toby 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.

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 Toby did oft-times
puzzle his visitors, and sometimes himself too.

To speak the truth, unless the company my father led up stairs were
tolerably clear-headed, or my uncle Toby was in one of his
explanatory moods, ’twas a difficult thing, do what he could, to keep
the discourse free from obscurity.

What rendered the account of this affair the more intricate to my uncle
Toby, was this,—that in the attack of the counterscarp, before the
gate of St. Nicolas, extending itself from the bank of the Maes,
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.

These perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle Toby Shandy 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.

No doubt my uncle Toby 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 Hippocrates, yet, whoever has
read Hippocrates, or Dr. James Mackenzie, 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
Toby must have undergone upon that score only.

—My uncle Toby 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.

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 Namur, 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 Toby’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 St. Roch:——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.

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 Toby his HOBBY-HORSE.

C H A P. XXVII

THERE 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.

——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.

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.

———How, in the name of wonder! could your uncle Toby, 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.

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 Toby’s character as a soldier excellently well,—and had he not
accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle the Lillabullero, 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.

——Therefore I answer thus:

Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever
read such a book as Locke’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.

But this by the way.

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.

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 Dolly your chamber-maid, and I will give
you my cap and bell along with it, if I make not this matter so plain
that Dolly herself should understand it as well as Malbranch.——When
Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, 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 Dolly’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.

When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly 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 Dolly’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 Dolly 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.

Now you must understand that not one of these was the true cause of the
confusion in my uncle Toby’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 not arise from.

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.

It is ten to one (at Arthur’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.

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 COUNCILS about χδια and υωοςασις; and
in the SCHOOLS of the learned about power and about spirit;—about
essences, and about quintessences;——about substances, and about
space.——What confusion in greater THEATRES from words of little
meaning, and as indeterminate a sense! when thou considerest this, thou
wilt not wonder at my uncle Toby’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.

C H A P. XXVIII

WHEN my uncle Toby got his map of Namur 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.

In a fortnight’s close and painful application, which, by the bye, did
my uncle Toby’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 Gobesius’s military architecture and pyroballogy,
translated from the Flemish, 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 Toby was able to cross the Maes and Sambre; make diversions
as far as Vauban’s line, the abbey of Salsines, &c. and give his
visitors as distinct a history of each of their attacks, as of that of
the gate of St. Nicolas, where he had the honour to receive his
wound.

But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with
the acquisition of it. The more my uncle Toby 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.

The more my uncle Toby 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 Italy or Flanders, 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.

In the second year my uncle Toby purchased Ramelli and Cataneo,
translated from the Italian;—likewise Stevinus, Moralis, the
Chevalier de Ville, Lorini, Cochorn, Sheeter, the Count de Pagan,
the Marshal Vauban, Mons. Blondel, with almost as many more books
of military architecture, as Don Quixote was found to have of
chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded his library.

Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in August,
ninety-nine, my uncle Toby 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 N. Tartaglia, 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 N. Tartaglia proved to
my uncle Toby to be an impossible thing.

——Endless is the search of Truth.

No sooner was my uncle Toby 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 Maltus, and studied him
devoutly.—He proceeded next to Galileo and Torricellius, wherein,
by certain Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the
precise path to be a PARABOLA—or else an HYPERBOLA,—and that the
parameter, or latus rectum, of the conic section of the said path,
was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct ratio, 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 Toby——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 KNOWLEDGE 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 Toby.

C H A P. XXIX

I WOULD 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
Toby——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.

——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 cum grano salis; 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.

In the latter end of the third year, my uncle Toby 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.

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
Toby’s eloquence brought tears into his eyes;——’twas unexpected:——My
uncle Toby, 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 Toby’s carriage; he had never once dropped one fretful or
discontented word;——he had been all patience,—all submission.

—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 Ronjat, the
king’s serjeant-surgeon, to do it for him.

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
Toby 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 Toby’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 Toby in the middle of his sentence.

C H A P. XXX

WHEN a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,—or,
in other words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows headstrong,——farewell cool
reason and fair discretion!

My uncle Toby’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
Toby’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 Trim, 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 Trim on the other,——my uncle Toby
embarked for Shandy-Hall.

The reason, or rather the rise of this sudden demigration was as
follows:

The table in my uncle Toby’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 Blondel off the table, and Count de
Pagon o’top of him.

’Twas to no purpose for a man, lame as my uncle Toby was, to think of
redressing these evils by himself,—he rung his bell for his man
Trim;——Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, prithee see what confusion I
have here been making—I must have some better contrivance,
Trim.—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 Trim, 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.

I must here inform you, that this servant of my uncle Toby’s, who
went by the name of Trim, had been a corporal in my uncle’s own
company,—his real name was James Butler,—but having got the nick-name
of Trim, in the regiment, my uncle Toby, unless when he happened to
be very angry with him, would never call him by any other name.

The poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a wound on his
left knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of Landen, which was two
years before the affair of Namur;—and as the fellow was well-beloved
in the regiment, and a handy fellow into the bargain, my uncle Toby
took him for his servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending my
uncle Toby 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.

My uncle Toby loved the man in return, and what attached him more to
him still, was the similitude of their knowledge.——For Corporal Trim,
(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 HOBBY-HORSICALLY, as a
body-servant, Non Hobby Horsical per se;——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
Toby himself.

I have but one more stroke to give to finish Corporal Trim’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 your Honour, with the
respectfulness of Corporal Trim’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 Toby was seldom
either the one or the other with him,—or, at least, this fault, in
Trim, broke no squares with them. My uncle Toby, 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 Trim.

If I durst presume, continued Trim, to give your Honour my advice,
and speak my opinion in this matter.—Thou art welcome, Trim, quoth my
uncle Toby—speak,——speak what thou thinkest upon the subject, man,
without fear.—Why then, replied Trim, (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 Trim, advancing his left, which was his lame leg, a little
forwards,—and pointing with his right hand open towards a map of
Dunkirk, which was pinned against the hangings,——I think, quoth
Corporal Trim, 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
Trim, 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, Trim, 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, Trim, 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, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby:—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 Flanders, 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,
Trim, said my uncle Toby.—Whether they are gazons or sods, is not
much matter, replied Trim; your Honour knows they are ten times
beyond a facing either of brick or stone.——I know they are, Trim in
some respects,——quoth my uncle Toby, 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
St. Nicolas’s gate) and facilitate the passage over it.

Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal Trim, 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.

My uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim 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 Trim’s project and
description.—Trim! said my uncle Toby, thou hast said enough.—We
might begin the campaign, continued Trim, on the very day that his
Majesty and the Allies take the field, and demolish them town by town
as fast as—Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, say no more. Your Honour,
continued Trim, might sit in your arm-chair (pointing to it) this
fine weather, giving me your orders, and I would——Say no more, Trim,
quoth my uncle Toby——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,
Trim,—quoth my uncle Toby (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, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, leaping up upon one leg, quite
overcome with rapture,—and thrusting a guinea into Trim’s
hand,—Trim, said my uncle Toby, say no more;—but go down, Trim,
this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant.

Trim ran down and brought up his master’s supper,—to no
purpose:—Trim’s plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby’s head,
he could not taste it.—Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, get me to
bed.—’Twas all one.—Corporal Trim’s description had fired his
imagination,—my uncle Toby 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 Trim’s
decampment.

My uncle Toby had a little neat country-house of his own, in the
village where my father’s estate lay at Shandy, 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 Trim wished for;—so that as Trim 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
Toby’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.

Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and
expectation, than my uncle Toby 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 Toby’s mind.—Vain
thought! however thick it was planted about,——or private soever it
might seem,—to think, dear uncle Toby, of enjoying a thing which took
up a whole rood and a half of ground,—and not have it known!

How my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim 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.

C H A P. XXXI

——WHAT can they be doing? brother, said my father.—I think, replied my
uncle Toby,—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.

Pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, Obadiah?——quoth my
father;——my brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak.

Sir, answered Obadiah, making a bow towards his left shoulder,—my
Mistress is taken very badly.—And where’s Susannah running down the
garden there, as if they were going to ravish her?——Sir, she is running
the shortest cut into the town, replied Obadiah, to fetch the old
midwife.—Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you go directly
for Dr. Slop, 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.

It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle
Toby, as Obadiah shut the door,——as there is so expert an operator
as Dr. Slop 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.

Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle Toby, 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.

——Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle
Toby, in the simplicity of his heart,—but MODESTY.—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 Toby had completed the sentence or not;—’tis
for his advantage to suppose he had,——as, I think, he could have added
no ONE WORD which would have improved it.

If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby 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
Aposiopesis.——Just Heaven! how does the Poco piu and the Poco
meno of the Italian artists;—the insensible MORE OR LESS, 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, et cætera,—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.

——“My sister, mayhap,” quoth my uncle Toby, “does not choose to let a
man come so near her ****” Make this dash,—’tis an Aposiopesis,—Take
the dash away, and write Backside,—’tis Bawdy.—Scratch Backside out,
and put Cover’d way in, ’tis a Metaphor;—and, I dare say, as
fortification ran so much in my uncle Toby’s head, that if he had
been left to have added one word to the sentence,——that word was it.

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.

C H A P. XXXII

THO’ 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.

This looked something like heat;—and the manner of his reply to what my
uncle Toby was saying, proved it was so.

—“Not choose,” quoth my father, (repeating my uncle Toby’s words) “to
let a man come so near her!”——By Heaven, brother Toby! you would try
the patience of Job;—and I think I have the plagues of one already
without it.——Why?——Where?——Wherein?——Wherefore?——Upon what account?
replied my uncle Toby: 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
Toby: And I think, continued he, that the shock I received the year
after the demolition of Dunkirk, in my affair with widow
Wadman;—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.

It is said in Aristotle’s Master Piece, “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.”

My uncle Toby, I suppose, thought of neither, for he look’d
horizontally.—Right end! quoth my uncle Toby, 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
Toby (keeping his eyes still fixed upon the bad joint) this month
together, I am sure I should not be able to find it out.

Then, brother Toby, replied my father, I will tell you.

Every thing in this world, continued my father (filling a fresh
pipe)—every thing in this world, my dear brother Toby, has two
handles.——Not always, quoth my uncle Toby.——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 Toby.—

ANALOGY, 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.

C H A P. XXXIII

IT is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle
Toby rung the bell, when Obadiah was ordered to saddle a horse, and
go for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife;—so that no one can say, with
reason, that I have not allowed Obadiah 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.

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.

I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight
miles from Shandy-Hall to Dr. Slop, the man-midwife’s house:—and
that whilst Obadiah has been going those said miles and back, I have
brought my uncle Toby from Namur, quite across all Flanders, into
England:—That I have had him ill upon my hands near four years;—and
have since travelled him and Corporal Trim in a chariot-and-four, a
journey of near two hundred miles down into Yorkshire.—all which put
together, must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance
of Dr. Slop upon the stage,—as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a
song, or a concerto between the acts.

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 ROMANCE, 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 Obadiah had not got above threescore yards from
the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. Slop;—and indeed he gave a
dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a
tragical one too.

Imagine to yourself;—but this had better begin a new chapter.

C H A P. XXXIV

IMAGINE to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor
Slop, 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.

Such were the out-lines of Dr. Slop’s figure, which—if you have read
Hogarth’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.

Imagine such a one,—for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop’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, Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a
coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable
speed the adverse way.

Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.

Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah 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.
Slop in his situation, than the worst of Whiston’s comets?—To say
nothing of the NUCLEUS; that is, of Obadiah 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.
Slop have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that
he was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy-Hall, 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 Obadiah 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. Slop was.

What could Dr. Slop 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 Obadiah’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.

Obadiah pull’d off his cap twice to Dr. Slop;—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 MOMENTUM of the coach-horse was so great, that Obadiah could not
do it all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr. Slop,
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
Obadiah had better have been a league off. In short, never was a Dr.
Slop so beluted, and so transubstantiated, since that affair came
into fashion.

C H A P. XXXV

WHEN Dr. Slop entered the back parlour, where my father and my uncle
Toby were discoursing upon the nature of women,——it was hard to
determine whether Dr. Slop’s figure, or Dr. Slop’s presence,
occasioned more surprize to them; for as the accident happened so near
the house, as not to make it worth while for Obadiah to remount
him,——Obadiah had led him in as he was, unwiped, unappointed,
unannealed, with all his stains and blotches on him.—He stood like
Hamlet’s ghost, motionless and speechless, for a full minute and a
half at the parlour-door (Obadiah 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 Obadiah’s explosion, that you would have sworn
(without mental reservation) that every grain of it had taken effect.

Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle Toby to have triumphed over
my father in his turn;—for no mortal, who had beheld Dr. Slop in that
pickle, could have dissented from so much, at least, of my uncle
Toby’s opinion, “That mayhap his sister might not care to let such a
Dr. Slop come so near her ****” But it was the Argumentum ad
hominem; and if my uncle Toby 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.

Dr. Slop’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. Slop 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 Shandy-Hall, as he did, merely to see how
matters went on.

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.

The ringing of the bell, and the rap upon the door, struck likewise
strong upon the sensorium of my uncle Toby,—but it excited a very
different train of thoughts;—the two irreconcileable pulsations
instantly brought Stevinus, the great engineer, along with them, into
my uncle Toby’s mind. What business Stevinus had in this affair,—is
the greatest problem of all:——It shall be solved,—but not in the next
chapter.

C H A P. XXXVI

WRITING, 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.

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.

’Tis his turn now;—I have given an ample description of Dr. Slop’s
sad overthrow, and of his sad appearance in the back-parlour;—his
imagination must now go on with it for a while.

Let the reader imagine then, that Dr. Slop has told his tale—and in
what words, and with what aggravations, his fancy chooses;—Let him
suppose, that Obadiah 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 Obadiah’s pumps, stepping
forwards towards the door, upon the very point of entering upon action.

Truce!—truce, good Dr. Slop!—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. Slop,—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 Lucina is
put obstetrically over thy head? Alas!—’tis too true.—Besides, great
son of Pilumnus! what canst thou do? Thou hast come forth
unarm’d;—thou hast left thy tire-téte,—thy new-invented
forceps,—thy crotchet,—thy squirt, 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 Obadiah back upon the coach-horse to
bring them with all speed.

——Make great haste, Obadiah, quoth my father, and I’ll give thee a
crown! and quoth my uncle Toby, I’ll give him another.

C H A P. XXXVII

YOUR sudden and unexpected arrival, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing
himself to Dr. Slop, (all three of them sitting down to the fire
together, as my uncle Toby began to speak)—instantly brought the
great Stevinus into my head, who, you must know, is a favourite
author with me.—Then, added my father, making use of the argument Ad
Crumenam,—I will lay twenty guineas to a single crown-piece (which
will serve to give away to Obadiah when he gets back) that this same
Stevinus was some engineer or other—or has wrote something or other,
either directly or indirectly, upon the science of fortification.

He has so,—replied my uncle Toby.—I knew it, said my father, though,
for the soul of me, I cannot see what kind of connection there can be
betwixt Dr. Slop’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 Toby, 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. Slop,
interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately at his pun.

Dennis 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.

Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself to Dr. Slop,—the
curtins my brother Shandy mentions here, have nothing to do with
beadsteads;—tho’, I know Du Cange 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 Curtin, 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 flanked. ( ’Tis the case of other curtains, quoth Dr. Slop,
laughing.) However, continued my uncle Toby, 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 Toby:—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.

—As for the horn-work (high! ho! sigh’d my father) which, continued my
uncle Toby, my brother was speaking of, they are a very considerable
part of an outwork;——they are called by the French engineers,
Ouvrage à corne, 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 Toby, 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
Toby, 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.——Accoucheur,—if you please, quoth Dr.
Slop.—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 Toby, have
my brains so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes,
ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, to be proprietor of Namur,
and of all the towns in Flanders with it.

My uncle Toby 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 Toby had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.

—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 Toby, 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.

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 Toby, has never since
been worn out of my mind: And tho’ I would not depreciate what the
study of the Literæ humaniores, 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.

This is to serve for parents and governors instead of a whole volume
upon the subject.

I could not give the reader this stroke in my uncle Toby’s picture,
by the instrument with which I drew the other parts of it,—that taking
in no more than the mere HOBBY-HORSICAL 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 Toby, whom he truly loved:——he would feel more pain, ten times
told (except in the affair of my aunt Dinah, or where an hypothesis
was concerned) than what he ever gave.

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 Stevinus.

I need not tell the reader, if he keeps a HOBBY-HORSE,—that a man’s
HOBBY-HORSE is as tender a part as he has about him; and that these
unprovoked strokes at my uncle Toby’s could not be unfelt by
him.——No:——as I said above, my uncle Toby did feel them, and very
sensibly too.

Pray, Sir, what said he?—How did he behave?—O, Sir!—it was great: For
as soon as my father had done insulting his HOBBY-HORSE,——he turned his
head without the least emotion, from Dr. Slop, 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 Toby’s hands as he spoke:—Brother Toby, 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 Toby,
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 Toby,——had it been fifty times as
much.——Besides, what have I to do, my dear Toby, cried my father,
either with your amusements or your pleasures, unless it was in my
power (which it is not) to increase their measure?

——Brother Shandy, answered my uncle Toby, 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 Shandy family at
your time of life.—But, by that, Sir, quoth Dr. Slop, Mr. Shandy
increases his own.—Not a jot, quoth my father.

C H A P. XXXVIII

MY brother does it, quoth my uncle Toby, out of principle.——In a
family way, I suppose, quoth Dr. Slop.——Pshaw!—said my father,—’tis
not worth talking of.

C H A P. XXXIX

AT the end of the last chapter, my father and my uncle Toby were left
both standing, like Brutus and Cassius, at the close of the scene,
making up their accounts.

As my father spoke the three last words,——he sat down;—my uncle Toby
exactly followed his example, only, that before he took his chair, he
rung the bell, to order Corporal Trim, who was in waiting, to step
home for Stevinus:—my uncle Toby’s house being no farther off than
the opposite side of the way.

Some men would have dropped the subject of Stevinus;—but my uncle
Toby had no resentment in his heart, and he went on with the subject,
to shew my father that he had none.

Your sudden appearance, Dr. Slop, quoth my uncle, resuming the
discourse, instantly brought Stevinus into my head. (My father, you
may be sure, did not offer to lay any more wagers upon Stevinus’s
head.)——Because, continued my uncle Toby, the celebrated sailing
chariot, which belonged to Prince Maurice, and was of such wonderful
contrivance and velocity, as to carry half a dozen people thirty
German miles, in I don’t know how few minutes,——was invented by
Stevinus, that great mathematician and engineer.

You might have spared your servant the trouble, quoth Dr. Slop (as
the fellow is lame) of going for Stevinus’s account of it, because in
my return from Leyden thro’ the Hague, I walked as far as
Schevling, which is two long miles, on purpose to take a view of it.

That’s nothing, replied my uncle Toby, to what the learned
Peireskius did, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning
from Paris to Schevling, and from Schevling to Paris back
again, in order to see it,—and nothing else.

Some men cannot bear to be out-gone.

The more fool Peireskius, replied Dr. Slop. But mark, ’twas out of
no contempt of Peireskius at all;——but that Peireskius’s
indefatigable labour in trudging so far on foot, out of love for the
sciences, reduced the exploit of Dr. Slop, in that affair, to
nothing:—the more fool Peireskius, 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 Peireskius, 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.

It answered, replied my uncle Toby, as well, if not better; for, as
Peireskius elegantly expresses it, speaking of the velocity of its
motion, Tam citus erat, quam erat ventus; which, unless I have forgot
my Latin, is, that it was as swift as the wind itself.

But pray, Dr. Slop, 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. Slop:—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.

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.

My father here had got into his element,—and was going on as
prosperously with his dissertation upon trade, as my uncle Toby 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,

C H A P. XL

IN popped Corporal Trim with Stevinus:—But ’twas too late,—all the
discourse had been exhausted without him, and was running into a new
channel.

—You may take the book home again, Trim, said my uncle Toby,
nodding to him.

But prithee, Corporal, quoth my father, drolling,—look first into it,
and see if thou canst spy aught of a sailing chariot in it.

Corporal Trim, 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 Trim, 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.

There is something falling out, however, said Trim, 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
Trim, 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.

The company smiled.

I cannot conceive how it is possible, quoth my uncle Toby, for such a
thing as a sermon to have got into my Stevinus.

I think ’tis a sermon, replied Trim:—but if it please your Honours,
as it is a fair hand, I will read you a page;—for Trim, you must
know, loved to hear himself read almost as well as talk.

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 Obadiah gets back, I shall be
obliged to you, brother, if Dr. Slop 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 Trim, I officiated
two whole campaigns, in Flanders, as clerk to the chaplain of the
regiment.——He can read it, quoth my uncle Toby, as well as I
can.——Trim, 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 Trim 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.

C H A P. XLI

—IF you have any objection,—said my father, addressing himself to Dr.
Slop. Not in the least, replied Dr. Slop;—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 Trim, for ’tis only
upon Conscience, an’ please your Honours.

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

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

C H A P. XLII

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

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

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

How the duce Corporal Trim, who knew not so much as an acute angle
from an obtuse one, came to hit it so exactly;——or whether it was
chance or nature, or good sense or imitation, &c. shall be commented
upon in that part of the 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.

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.

=> This I recommend to painters;—need I add,—to orators!—I think not;
for unless they practise it,——they must fall upon their noses.

So much for Corporal Trim’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.

Corporal Trim’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.

Let not the critic ask how Corporal Trim could come by all
this.——I’ve told him it should be explained;—but so he stood before my
father, my uncle Toby, and Dr. Slop,—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 Hebrew Professor
himself, could have much mended it.

Trim made a bow, and read as follows:

The S E R M O N.

HEBREWS xiii. 18.

———For we trust we have a
good Conscience.

“TRUST!——Trust we have a good conscience!”

[Certainly, Trim, 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.

He is, an’ please your Honour, replied Trim. Pugh! said my father,
smiling.

Sir, quoth Dr. Slop, Trim 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. Slop, that the writer is of
our church?—for aught I can see yet,—he may be of any church.——Because,
answered Dr. Slop, 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 Toby. No, replied Dr. Slop, he would have an old house
over his head. Pray is the Inquisition an ancient building, answered my
uncle Toby, or is it a modern one?—I know nothing of architecture,
replied Dr. Slop.—An’ please your Honours, quoth Trim, the
Inquisition is the vilest——Prithee spare thy description, Trim, I
hate the very name of it, said my father.—No matter for that, answered
Dr. Slop,—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 Toby.
Amen, added Trim; 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 Toby, hastily:—How came he there, Trim?——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
Tom went over a servant to Lisbon,—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 Trim,
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 Trim, (pulling
out his handkerchief) as ever blood warmed.——

—The tears trickled down Trim’s cheeks faster than he could well wipe
them away.—A dead silence in the room ensued for some minutes.—Certain
proof of pity!

Come Trim, 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.

Corporal Trim wiped his face, and returned his handkerchief into his
pocket, and, making a bow as he did it,—he began again.]

The S E R M O N.

HEBREWS xiii. 18.

——For we trust we have a good
Conscience.—

“TRUST! 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.”

[I am positive I am right, quoth Dr. Slop.]

“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.”

[I defy him, without an assistant, quoth Dr. Slop.]

“In other matters we may be deceived by false appearances; and, as the
wise man complains, 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. 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.”

[The language is good, and I declare Trim reads very well, quoth my
father.]

“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.”

[Then the apostle is altogether in the wrong, I suppose, quoth Dr.
Slop, and the Protestant divine is in the right. Sir, have patience,
replied my father, for I think it will presently appear that St. Paul
and the Protestant divine are both of an opinion.—As nearly so, quoth
Dr. Slop, as east is to west;—but this, continued he, lifting both
hands, comes from the liberty of the press.

It is no more at the worst, replied my uncle Toby, than the liberty
of the pulpit; for it does not appear that the sermon is printed, or
ever likely to be.

Go on, Trim, quoth my father.]

“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 WIT 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 INTEREST 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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“Alas! Conscience had something else to do all this time, than break in
upon him; as Elijah reproached the god Baal,——this domestic god
was either talking, or pursuing, or was in a journey, or peradventure
he slept and could not be awoke.

“Perhaps HE was gone out in company with HONOUR to fight a duel: to pay
off some debt at play;——or “dirty annuity, the bargain of his lust;
Perhaps CONSCIENCE 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. Slop, he could not]—“sleeps as soundly in
his bed;—and at last meets death unconcernedly;—perhaps much more so,
than a much better man.”

[All this is impossible with us, quoth Dr. Slop, 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. Slop,
(struck a little with my father’s frank acknowledgment)—that a man in
the Romish 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. Slop, he would
be denied the benefits of the last sacraments.—Pray how many have you
in all, said my uncle Toby,——for I always forget?——Seven, answered
Dr. Slop.——Humph!—said my uncle Toby; 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 Toby. Dr. Slop, who had
an ear, understood my uncle Toby as well as if he had wrote a whole
volume against the seven sacraments.——Humph! replied Dr. Slop,
(stating my uncle Toby’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
Toby.——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, Trim.]

“Another is sordid, unmerciful,” (here Trim 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 Trim, I
think this a viler man than the other.]

“Shall not conscience rise up and sting him on such occasions?——No;
thank God there is no occasion, 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.

“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.

“When old age comes on, and repentance calls him to look back upon this
black account, and state it over again with his conscience—CONSCIENCE
looks into the STATUTES AT LARGE;—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.”

[Here Corporal Trim and my uncle Toby exchanged looks with each
other.—Aye, Aye, Trim! quoth my uncle Toby, shaking his
head,——these are but sorry fortifications, Trim.———O! very poor work,
answered Trim, to what your Honour and I make of it.——The character
of this last man, said Dr. Slop, interrupting Trim, 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 blinded,——three times in a year, at
least, he must go to confession. Will that restore it to sight? quoth
my uncle Toby,——Go on, Trim, quoth my father, or Obadiah will
have got back before thou has got to the end of thy sermon.——’Tis a
very short one, replied Trim.—I wish it was longer, quoth my uncle
Toby, for I like it hugely.—Trim went on.]

“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.

“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.

“Let him consider in how different a degree of detestation, numbers of
wicked actions stand there, 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.

“When David surprized Saul 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 Uriah, 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 Nathan 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.

“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.

“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?

“Let CONSCIENCE 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. Slop fell
asleep]—“thou wilt have confidence towards God;——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.

“Blessed is the man, indeed, then, as the author of the book of
Ecclesiasticus expresses it, who is not pricked with the multitude
of his sins: Blessed is the man “whose heart hath not condemned him;
whether he be rich, or whether he be poor, if he have a good heart (a
heart thus guided and informed) 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.”—[A tower has no strength, quoth
my uncle Toby, 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:—Forced, 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.”

[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. Slop 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. Paul in the least;—nor has there
been, brother, the least difference between them.——A great matter, if
they had differed, replied my uncle Toby,—the best friends in the
world may differ sometimes.——True,—brother Toby quoth my father,
shaking hands with him,—we’ll fill our pipes, brother, and then Trim
shall go on.

Well,——what dost thou think of it? said my father, speaking to Corporal
Trim, as he reached his tobacco-box.

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 Corps de Garde a hundred times, continued Trim,
rising an inch higher in his figure, as he spoke,—and all the time I
had the honour to serve his Majesty King William, in relieving the
most considerable posts, I never left more than two in my life.——Very
right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,—but you do not consider, Trim,
that the towers, in Solomon’s days, were not such things as our
bastions, flanked and defended by other works;—this, Trim, was an
invention since Solomon’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 Coup de main:—So that the
seven men upon the tower were a party, I dare say, from the Corps de
Garde, 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 Trim to read on. He read on as follows:

“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 tables, even in
imagination, (tho’ the attempt is often made in practice) without
breaking and mutually destroying them both.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“I will illustrate this by an example.

“I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I usually call
in,”—[There is no need, cried Dr. Slop, (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.

“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.

“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 HONOUR, or some such capricious principle—Strait security for
two of the most valuable blessings!—my property and myself.

“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.

“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.

“This likewise is a sore evil under the sun; 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 Romish church;”—[Well what can you make of that? cried Dr.
Slop]—“see what scenes of cruelty, murder, rapine, bloodshed,”——[They
may thank their own obstinacy, cried Dr. Slop]——have all been
sanctified by a religion not strictly governed by morality.

“In how many kingdoms of the world”—[Here Trim 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.]

“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.”

[I have been in many a battle, an’ please your Honour, quoth Trim,
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.
Slop, looking towards Trim, 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 Trim, that I never refused
quarter in my life to any man who cried out for it;——but to a woman or
a child, continued Trim, before I would level my musket at them, I
would lose my life a thousand times.——Here’s a crown for thee, Trim,
to drink with Obadiah to-night, quoth my uncle Toby, and I’ll give
Obadiah another too.—God bless your Honour, replied Trim,——I had
rather these poor women and children had it.——thou art an honest
fellow, quoth my uncle Toby.——My father nodded his head, as much as
to say—and so he is.——

But prithee, Trim, said my father, make an end,—for I see thou hast
but a leaf or two left.

Corporal Trim read on.]

“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.

“To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons of
the Inquisition.”—[God help my poor brother Tom.]—“Behold Religion,
with Mercy and Justice 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 Trim’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
Trim, 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 Trim
in a most passionate exclamation, dropping the sermon upon the ground,
and clapping his hands together—I fear ’tis poor Tom. My father’s and
my uncle Toby’s heart yearned with sympathy for the poor fellow’s
distress; even Slop himself acknowledged pity for him.——Why, Trim,
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.

“Observe the last movement of that horrid engine!”—[I would rather face
a cannon, quoth Trim, 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 Portugal.]—“’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 Trim for all this world;—I fear, an’
please your Honours, all this is in Portugal, where my poor brother
Tom is. I tell thee, Trim, again, quoth my father, ’tis not an
historical account,—’tis a description.—’Tis only a description, honest
man, quoth Slop, there’s not a word of truth in it.——That’s another
story, replied my father.—However, as Trim reads it with so much
concern,—’tis cruelty to force him to go on with it.—Give me hold of
the sermon, Trim,—I’ll finish it for thee, and thou may’st go. I must
stay and hear it too, replied Trim, if your Honour will allow
me;—tho’ I would not read it myself for a Colonel’s pay.——Poor Trim!
quoth my uncle Toby. My father went on.]

“——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 Trim, 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 Trim,—he is out of his pain,—and they have done their
worst at him.—O Sirs!—Hold your peace, Trim, said my father, going on
with the sermon, lest Trim should incense Dr. Slop,—we shall never
have done at this rate.]

“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——By their fruits ye shall know them.

“I will add no farther to the length of this sermon, than by two or
three short and independent rules deducible from it.

“First, 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 CREED. 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.

“Secondly, 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 against his stomach;—a present want of appetite being
generally the true cause of both.

“In a word,—trust that man in nothing, who has not a CONSCIENCE in
every thing.

“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 Asiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and
flows of his own passions,—but like a British judge in this land of
liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faithfully declares
that law which he knows already written.”

F  I  N  I  S.

Thou hast read the sermon extremely well, Trim, quoth my father.—If
he had spared his comments, replied Dr. Slop,——he would have read it
much better.

I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered Trim, but that
my heart was so full.—That was the very reason, Trim, 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. Slop, 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. Slop]—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 French 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. Slop.—I know that very well, said my
father,—but in a tone and manner which disgusted Dr. Slop, full as
much as his assent, simply, could have pleased him.——But in this, added
Dr. Slop, 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 Toby,—who’s
can this be?—How could it get into my Stevinus? A man must be as
great a conjurer as Stevinus, 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.

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 à priori could
prove such a thing to a philosophic mind, That it was Yorick’s and no
one’s else:—It was proved to be so, à posteriori, the day after, when
Yorick sent a servant to my uncle Toby’s house to enquire after it.

It seems that Yorick, who was inquisitive after all kinds of
knowledge, had borrowed Stevinus of my uncle Toby, and had
carelesly popped his sermon, as soon as he had made it, into the middle
of Stevinus; and by an act of forgetfulness, to which he was ever
subject, he had sent Stevinus home, and his sermon to keep him
company.

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 MANES till this very moment, that I tell the
world the story.

Can the reader believe, that this sermon of Yorick’s was preached at
an assize, in the cathedral of York, 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 Yorick’s death?—Yorick 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.

However, as the gentleman who did it was in perfect charity with
Yorick,—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.

The first is, That in doing justice, I may give rest to Yorick’s
ghost;——which—as the country-people, and some others believe,——still
walks.

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 Yorick, and this sample of his sermons, is liked,——there are
now in the possession of the Shandy family, as many as will make a
handsome volume, at the world’s service,——and much good may they do it.

C H A P. XLIII

OBADIAH 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 Trim went out of the room.

It is now proper, I think, quoth Dr. Slop, (clearing up his looks) as
we are in a condition to be of some service to Mrs. Shandy, to send
up stairs to know how she goes on.

I have ordered, answered my father, the old midwife to come down to us
upon the least difficulty;—for you must know, Dr. Slop, 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, en Souveraines, in whose
hands, and in what fashion, they choose to undergo it.

They are in the right of it,——quoth my uncle Toby. But Sir, replied
Dr. Slop, not taking notice of my uncle Toby’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. Slop.—I beg your pardon,——answered my uncle
Toby.—Sir, replied Dr. Slop, 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 fœtus,——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 Toby, you had seen what prodigious
armies we had in Flanders.

C H A P. XLIV

I HAVE dropped the curtain over this scene for a minute,——to remind you
of one thing,——and to inform you of another.

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.

When these two things are done,—the curtain shall be drawn up again,
and my uncle Toby, my father, and Dr. Slop, shall go on with their
discourse, without any more interruption.

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.

—Mr. Shandy, 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 in infinitum;——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.

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.

You cry out, he would say, we are a ruined, undone people. Why? he
would ask, making use of the sorites or syllogism of Zeno and
Chrysippus, 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.

’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.

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.

Amongst the many and excellent reasons, with which my father had urged
my mother to accept of Dr. Slop’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.

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.

My father set out upon the strength of these two following axioms:

First, That an ounce of a man’s own wit, was worth a ton of other
people’s; and,

Secondly, (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.

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.

Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this matter, he
was satisfied it could not be where Des Cartes had fixed it, upon the
top of the pineal 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 Toby, who rescued him out of it, by a story he told him of a
Walloon officer at the battle of Landen, who had one part of his
brain shot away by a musket-ball,—and another part of it taken out
after by a French surgeon; and after all, recovered, and did his duty
very well without it.

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.

As for that certain, very thin, subtle and very fragrant juice which
Coglionissimo Borri, the great Milaneze physician affirms, in a
letter to Bartholine, 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 Metheglingius, being
called the Animus, the other, the Anima;)—as for the opinion, I say
of Borri,—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 Anima, or even the Animus, 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.

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
medulla oblongata, wherein it was generally agreed by Dutch
anatomists, that all the minute nerves from all the organs of the seven
senses concentered, like streets and winding alleys, into a square.

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 Shandean
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.

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 Causa
sina qua non, 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.

——This requires explanation.

My father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon looking into
Lithopædus Senonesis de Portu difficili,[4] published by Adrianus
Smelvgot, 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 Borri pretends—is it not enough to make the clearest liquid in the
world both seculent and mothery?

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.

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?

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.

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 à priori, it could not be
otherwise,——unless **** I don’t know what. It wonderfully explained and
accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic 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.

When my father had got so far,——what a blaze of light did the accounts
of the Caesarian 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 os pubis on this side, or os coxygis on
that;——and pray, what were the happy consequences? Why, Sir, your
Julius Caesar, who gave the operation a name;—and your Hermes
Trismegistus, who was born so before ever the operation had a
name;——your Scipio Africanus; your Manlius Torquatus; our Edward
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 side-way, Sir, into the world.

The incision of the abdomen and uterus ran for six weeks together
in my father’s head;——he had read, and was satisfied, that wounds in
the epigastrium, and those in the matrix, 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.

This was my father Mr. Shandy’s hypothesis; concerning which I have
only to add, that my brother Bobby 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 Epsom,——being moreover my mother’s
first child,—coming into the world with his head foremost,—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.

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.

Of all men in the world, Dr. Slop 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.

This will account for the coalition betwixt my father and Dr. Slop,
in the ensuing discourse, which went a little hard against my uncle
Toby.——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 Toby 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 TRISTRAM, 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 Alquise, the
magician in Don Belianis of Greece, nor the no less famous
Urganda, the sorceress his wife, (were they alive) could pretend to
come within a league of the truth.

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.

 [4] The author is here twice mistaken; for Lithopædus should be
 wrote thus, Lithopædii Senonensis Icon. The second mistake is, that
 this Lithopædus is not an author, but a drawing of a petrified
 child. The account of this, published by Athosius 1580, may be seen
 at the end of Cordæus’s works in Spachius. Mr. Tristram Shandy
 has been led into this error, either from seeing Lithopædus’s name
 of late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr. ——, or by mistaking
 Lithopædus for Trinecavellius,—from the too great similitude of
 the names.

C H A P. XLV

——“I WISH, Dr. Slop,” quoth my uncle Toby, (repeating his wish
for Dr. Slop a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and
earnestness in his manner of wishing, than he had wished at
first[5])——“I wish, Dr. Slop,” quoth my uncle Toby, “you had seen
what prodigious armies we had in Flanders.”

My uncle Toby’s wish did Dr. Slop 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.

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 wisher 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.

This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.—

Dr. Slop 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.
Slop, 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 Toby’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
Toby, so took up the discourse as follows.

 [5] Vide page 260.

C H A P. XLVI

“—WHAT prodigious armies you had in Flanders!”—

Brother Toby, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head
with his right hand, and with his left pulling out a striped India
handkerchief from his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as
he argued the point with my uncle Toby.——

——Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; and I will give you
my reasons for it.

Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, “Whether my
father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his
left,”—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?

As my father’s India 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.

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: Reynolds himself, as
great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat.

Now as my father managed this matter,—consider what a devil of a figure
my father made of himself.

In the latter end of Queen Anne’s reign, and in the beginning of the
reign of King George the first—“Coat pockets were cut very low down
in the skirt.”—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.

C H A P. XLVII

IT 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 Toby
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 St. Nicolas;—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 Trim to go and fetch his map of
Namur, 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.

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 Toby dismounted
immediately.

——I did not apprehend your uncle Toby was o’horseback.——

C H A P. XLVIII

A MAN’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.

Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionysius, Heracleotes,
Antipater, Panætius, and Possidonius amongst the Greeks;——Cato
and Varro and Seneca amongst the Romans;——Pantenus and Clemens
Alexandrinus and Montaigne amongst the Christians; and a score and a
half of good, honest, unthinking Shandean 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.

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.

——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?

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 MAY (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 Toby gave the fly which
buzz’d about his nose all dinner-time,——“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.”

C H A P. XLIX

ANY 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 Toby, 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—con furia,—like mad.—Grant me patience!——What has con
furia,——con strepito,——or any other hurly burly whatever to do with
harmony?

Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle Toby, 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 Toby 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.

C H A P. L

“WHAT prodigious armies you had in Flanders!”

——Brother Toby, 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 Toby, 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 Toby,
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 Toby, 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 Toby
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 Lillabullero.

C H A P. LI

WHILST my uncle Toby was whistling Lillabullero to my father,—Dr.
Slop was stamping, and cursing and damning at Obadiah 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.

When Dr. Slop’s maid delivered the green baize bag with her master’s
instruments in it, to Obadiah, 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 Obadiah 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 Obadiah, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn
together with all the strength of his body.

This answered all that Obadiah 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 Obadiah could not make a trot of it, but with such a
terrible jingle, what with the tire téte, forceps, and squirt, as
would have been enough, had Hymen been taking a jaunt that way, to
have frightened him out of the country; but when Obadiah 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.

As Obadiah 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.——“The poor fellow, Sir, was not able
to hear himself whistle.”

C H A P. LII

AS Obadiah 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.

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.

As Obadiah’s was a mixed case——mark, Sirs,——I say, a mixed case; for
it was obstetrical,——scrip-tical, squirtical, papistical——and as far
as the coach-horse was concerned in it,——caballistical——and only partly
musical;—Obadiah 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. Slop must have had three fifths of Job’s
patience at least to have unloosed them.—I think in my conscience, that
had NATURE been in one of her nimble moods, and in humour for such a
contest——and she and Dr. Slop both fairly started together——there is
no man living which had seen the bag with all that Obadiah 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 knots.——Sport of small accidents, Tristram Shandy!
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.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME

Tristram Shandy

Tristram Shandy




THE
LIFE AND OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY,
GENTLEMAN

Volume the Second

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.

JOAN. SARESBERIENSIS,
Episcopus Lugdun.

C H A P.   I

GREAT wits jump: for the moment Dr. Slop cast his eyes upon his bag
(which he had not done till the dispute with my uncle Toby about
mid-wifery put him in mind of it)—the very same thought occurred.—’Tis
God’s mercy, quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. Shandy 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. Slop’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.

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. Slop, unless I make haste, the thing will
actually befall me as it is.

C H A P. II

IN the case of knots,—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. Hammond Shandy,—a
little man,—but of high fancy:—he rushed into the duke of Monmouth’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 bona fide, as Obadiah 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 implication of them—to get them slipp’d and undone
by.——I hope you apprehend me.

In the case of these knots 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. Slop 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. Slop.——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!——

My father had a great respect for Obadiah, 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.

Had Dr. Slop 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.

Small curses, Dr. Slop, 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. Slop.—They are like sparrow-shot, quoth my uncle Toby
(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 Toby) 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.—“Injuries come only from the heart,”—quoth my uncle
Toby. For this reason, continued my father, with the most
Cervantick 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. Slop, 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 Toby 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. Slop—the devil take the fellow.——Then, answered my father,
’Tis much at your service, Dr. Slop—on condition you will read it
aloud;——so rising up and reaching down a form of excommunication of the
church of Rome, a copy of which, my father (who was curious in his
collections) had procured out of the leger-book of the church of
Rochester, writ by ERNULPHUS the bishop——with a most affected
seriousness of look and voice, which might have cajoled ERNULPHUS
himself—he put it into Dr. Slop’s hands.——Dr. Slop 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 Toby
whistling Lillabullero as loud as he could all the time.

Textus de Ecclesiâ Roffensi, per Ernulfum Episcopum.

C A P.   III
EXCOMMUNICATIO.[6]

EX auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus Sancti,
et sanctorum canonum, sanctæque et entemeratæ Virginis Dei genetricis
Mariae,—

——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
       vel  os    s  vel os
anathematizamus hunc furem, vel hunc
      s
malefactorem, N.N. et a liminibus sanctæ Dei ecclesiæ sequestramus, et
æternis
    vel i     n
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-
  vel eorum
cerna ejus in secula seculorum nisi resque-
 n                  n
rit, et ad satisfactionem venerit.   Amen.
      os
Maledicat illum Deus Pater qui homi-
            os

nem creavit. Maledicat illum Dei Filius qui pro homine passus est.
Maledicat
 os
illum Spiritus Sanctus qui in baptismo ef-
            os

fusus est. Maledicat illum sancta crux, quam Christus pro nostrâ salute
hostem triumphans ascendit.
        os

Maledicat illum sancta Dei genetrix et
                     os
perpetua Virgo Maria. Maledicat illum sanctus Michael, animarum
susceptor sa-
            os

crarum. Maledicant illum omnes angeli et archangeli, principatus et
potestates, omnisque militia cœlestis.

       os

Maledicat illum patriarcharum et prophetarum laudabilis numerus.
Maledicat
  os
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-
           os

runt. Maledicat illum cuneus martyrum et confessorum mirificus, qui Deo
bonis operibus placitus inventus est.

      os

Maledicant illum sacrarum virginum chori, quæ mundi vana causa honoris
Christi respuenda contempserunt. Male-
     os
dicant illum omnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque in finem seculi Deo
dilecti inveniuntur.

        os

Maledicant illum cœli et terra, et omnia sancta in eis manentia.

     i  n          n

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.

     i  n

Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo,——
———      ———      ———
———      ———      ———
———      ———      ———
———      ———      ———
———      ———      ———
———      ———      ———
———      ———      ———
manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormitando,
dormiendo, vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, operando,
quiescendo, mingendo, cacando, flebotomando.

      i  n

Maledictus sit in totis viribus corporis.
      i  n

Maledictus sit intus et exterius.
      i  n           i

Maledictus sit in capillis; maledictus
n              i  n
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.

Maledictus sit in totis compagibus membrorum, a vertice capitis, usque
ad plantam pedis—non sit in eo sanitas.

Maledicat illum Christus Filius Dei vivi toto suæ majestatis imperio——

—et insurgat adversus illum cœlum cum omnibus virtutibus quæ in eo
moventur ad damnandum eum, nisi penituerit et ad satisfactionem
venerit.  Amen.

Fiat, fiat.  Amen.

 [6] 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. Shandy returns thanks to the chapter clerk of the
 dean and chapter of Rochester.

C H A P. IV

“BY the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and
of the holy canons, and of the undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and
patroness of our Saviour.” I think there is no necessity, quoth Dr.
Slop, 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 Shandy 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. Slop did not altogether like
it,——but my uncle Toby offering at that instant to give over
whistling, and read it himself to them;——Dr. Slop thought he might as
well read it under the cover of my uncle Toby’s whistling——as suffer
my uncle Toby 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 Toby whistling Lillabullero,
though not quite so loud as before.

“By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and
of the undefiled Virgin Mary, 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” (Obadiah) “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 Dathan and
Abiram, 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”
(Obadiah, of the knots which he has tied) “and make satisfaction”
(for them) “Amen.”

“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” (Obadiah)——“May the holy cross which Christ, for our
salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him.

“May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him.——May
St. Michael, 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 Flanders, cried my
uncle Toby,——but nothing to this.——For my own part I could not have a
heart to curse my dog so.]

“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’ (Obadiah.)

“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—

“May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things remaining therein,
damn him,” (Obadiah) “or her,” (or whoever else had a hand in tying
these knots.)

“May he (Obadiah) 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 Toby, taking the advantage of a
minim in the second bar of his tune, kept whistling one continued
note to the end of the sentence.——Dr. Slop, 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!

“May he” (Obadiah) “be cursed in all the faculties of his body!

“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!

“May he be damn’d in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and
purtenance, down to the very stomach!

“May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin,” (God in heaven
forbid! quoth my uncle Toby) “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!

“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!

“May the son of the living God, with all the glory of his
Majesty”——(Here my uncle Toby, throwing back his head, gave a
monstrous, long, loud Whew—w—w———something betwixt the interjectional
whistle of Hay-day! and the word itself.——

——By the golden beard of Jupiter—and of Juno (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 Varro 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 Cid Hamet
offered his——to have stood by, and heard my uncle Toby’s
accompanyment.

——“curse him!”—continued Dr. Slop,—“and may heaven, with all the
powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him”
(Obadiah) “unless he repent and make satisfaction! Amen. So be it,—so
be it. Amen.”

I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the
devil himself with so much bitterness.—He is the father of curses,
replied Dr. Slop.——So am not I, replied my uncle.——But he is cursed,
and damn’d already, to all eternity, replied Dr. Slop.

I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle Toby.

Dr. Slop drew up his mouth, and wasjust beginning to return my uncle
Toby 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.

C H A P. V

NOW 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.

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 befetish’d 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 Guiney;—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.

—And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?—Oh, against all
rule, my lord,—most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the
adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender,
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!

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!

——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 Bossu’s——’tis out, my lord, in every one of its
dimensions.—Admirable connoisseur!

——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 Titian—the expression of Rubens—the grace of
Raphael—the purity of Dominichino—the corregiescity of
Corregio—the learning of Poussin—the airs of Guido—the taste of
the Carrachis—or the grand contour of Angelo.—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!

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.

Great Apollo! 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 Mercury, with the rules and compasses, if
he can be spared, with my compliments to—no matter.

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 St. Paul’s
thumb——God’s flesh and God’s fish, 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 Ernulphus 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—“G—d damn you.”—Set it beside Ernulphus’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 Ernulphus cursed—no part escaped
him.—’Tis true there is something of a hardness in his manner——and,
as in Michael Angelo, a want of grace——but then there is such a
greatness of gusto!

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 Ernulphus’s anathema, as an institute
of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing
in some milder pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding
pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the
laws of it;—for the same reason that Justinian, in the decline of the
empire, had ordered his chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman
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.

For this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath
from the great and tremendous oath of William the conqueror (By the
splendour of God) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger (Damn your
eyes) which was not to be found in Ernulphus.—In short, he would
add—I defy a man to swear out of it.

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.

C H A P. VI

——BLESS 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. Slop,) and the
child is where it was, continued Susannah,—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 Slop.—There is no need of that,
replied Susannah,—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.

Human nature is the same in all professions.

The midwife had just before been put over Dr. Slop’s head—He had not
digested it.—No, replied Dr. Slop, ’twould be full as proper if the
midwife came down to me.—I like subordination, quoth my uncle
Toby,—and but for it, after the reduction of Lisle, I know not what
might have become of the garrison of Ghent, in the mutiny for bread,
in the year Ten.—Nor, replied Dr. Slop, (parodying my uncle Toby’s
hobby-horsical reflection; though full as hobby-horsical himself)——do I
know, Captain Shandy, 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 à
propos, that without it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by
the Shandy family, as long as the Shandy family had a name.

C H A P. VII

LET us go back to the ******——in the last chapter.

It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when
eloquence flourished at Athens and Rome, and would be so now, did
orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had
the thing about you in petto, 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 Tully’s second Philippick—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.

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
trunk-hose.—We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing.

C H A P. VIII

DR. Slop 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 Toby—’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 Toby
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. Slop would never have given them
up;—and my uncle Toby would as soon have thought of flying, as taking
them by force: but Dr. Slop 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 forceps, his
forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it.

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 Toby’s side.—“Good God!” cried my
uncle Toby, “are children brought into the world with a squirt?”

C H A P. IX

—UPON my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of skin quite off the
back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle Toby—and you
have crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly.
’Tis your own fault, said Dr. Slop——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 Toby.——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. Slop.—I maintain
it, said my uncle Toby, 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. Slop, 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.

Pray do, added my uncle Toby.

C H A P. X

——AND 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. Slop
(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 * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *

——What the possibility was, Dr. Slop whispered very low to my father,
and then to my uncle Toby.——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.

——It is morally impossible the reader should understand this——’tis
enough Dr. Slop understood it;——so taking the green baize bag in his
hand, with the help of Obadiah’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.

C H A P. XI

IT is two hours, and ten minutes—and no more—cried my father, looking
at his watch, since Dr. Slop and Obadiah arrived—and I know not how
it happens, Brother Toby—but to my imagination it seems almost an
age.

——Here—pray, Sir, take hold of my cap—nay, take the bell along with it,
and my pantoufles too.

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.

Though my father said, “he knew not how it happen’d,”—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 Toby a clear account of
the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of duration
and its simple modes, in order to shew my uncle Toby 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. Slop 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.”

——’Tis owing entirely, quoth my uncle Toby, to the succession of our
ideas.

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 Toby, 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 INFINITY
PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY, NECESSITY, and so forth, upon whose desperate and
unconquerable theories so many fine heads have been turned and
cracked——never did my uncle Toby’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.

Do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my father.

Not I, quoth my uncle.

—But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about?

No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby.

Gracious heaven! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two
hands together——there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother
Toby——’twere almost a pity to exchange it for a knowledge.—But I’ll
tell thee.——

To understand what time is aright, without which we never can
comprehend infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the other——we
ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is we have of
duration, so as to give a satisfactory account how we came by
it.——What is that to any body? quoth my uncle Toby.[7] For if you
will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind, continued my father, 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——You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle Toby.

——’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 succession of our ideas be of
any use or service to us at all.

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 Toby——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 Toby, mine
are more like a smoke-jack.——Then, brother Toby, I have nothing more
to say to you upon that subject, said my father.

 [7] Vide Locke.

C H A P. XII

——WHAT 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 Toby 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 Lucian——if
it is in being——if not, why then by his ashes! by the ashes of my dear
Rabelais, and dearer Cervantes!——my father and my uncle Toby’s
discourse upon TIME and ETERNITY——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 Ontologic Treasury of such a jewel,
as no coalition of great occasions and great men are ever likely to
restore to it again.

C H A P. XIII

THO’ my father persisted in not going on with the discourse—yet he
could not get my uncle Toby’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.

As for my uncle Toby, his smoke-jack had not made a dozen
revolutions, before he fell asleep also.——Peace be with them both!——Dr.
Slop is engaged with the midwife and my mother above stairs.——Trim
is busy in turning an old pair of jack-boots into a couple of mortars,
to be employed in the siege of Messina 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.

The A U T H O R ’s P R E F A C E

NO, 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.

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.

Now, Agalastes (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth, That there may be
some wit in it, for aught he knows——but no judgment at all. And
Triptolemus and Phutatorius 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 Locke——so are farting and
hickuping, say I. But in answer to this, Didius the great church
lawyer, in his code de fartendi et illustrandi fallaciis, 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.

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;——Monopolus, my politician—Didius,
my counsel; Kysarcius, my friend;—Phutatorius, my
guide;——Gastripheres, the preserver of my life; Somnolentius, 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,

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.

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.

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.

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 wit and judgment,
which I have so bountifully wished both for your worships and
myself—there is but a certain quantum 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.

Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North
Lapland, 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 judgment imaginable does the
business——and of wit——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 plentiful a lack 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 Norway—crossing over Swedeland, if you
please, through the small triangular province of Angermania to the
lake of Bothmia; coasting along it through east and west Bothnia,
down to Carelia, and so on, through all those states and provinces
which border upon the far side of the Gulf of Finland, and the
north-east of the Baltick, up to Petersbourg, and just stepping
into Ingria;—then stretching over directly from thence through the
north parts of the Russian empire—leaving Siberia a little upon the
left hand, till we got into the very heart of Russian and Asiatick
Tartary.

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.

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 height of our wit, and the depth of our
judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and
breadth 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.

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.

It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that
kind of argumentative process, which Suidas calls dialectick
induction——that I draw and set up this position as most true and
veritable;

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 How d’ye 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.

In the fore-ground of this picture, a statesman turning the political
wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round——against the stream of
corruption—by Heaven!——instead of with it.

In this corner, a son of the divine Esculapius, 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.

In that spacious HALL, 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 out of the great
doors, instead of, in——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 John o’Nokes
his nose could stand in Tom o’Stiles 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 ACTION 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.

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
wit are reported to be men of most judgment.——But mark—I say,
reported to be—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.

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.

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.

I enter now directly upon the point.

—Here stands wit—and there stands judgment, 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.

—You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its
frame—as wit and judgment are of ours—and like them too,
indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order, as we say in
all such cases of duplicated embellishments——to answer one another.

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?

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.

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 gravities,
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 hue and cry at the same time
against the lawful owners.

I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning
and artifice——that the great Locke, 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 poor wits 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.

This has been made the Magna Charta 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.

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.

C H A P. XIV

EVERY 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.

——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?

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 Shandy Hall——the
parlour door hinge shall be mended this reign.

C H A P. XV

WHEN Corporal Trim 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.

Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mentioning the affair of
hinges, I had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it
is this.

Had the parlour door opened and turn’d upon its hinges, as a door
should do—

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 Trim’s peeping
in: the moment he had beheld my father and my uncle Toby 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.

“When things move upon bad hinges, an’ please your lordships, how
can it be otherwise?”

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
Trim, but two mortars I am bringing in.—They shan’t make a clatter
with them here, cried my father hastily.—If Dr. Slop has any drugs to
pound, let him do it in the kitchen.—May it please your honour, cried
Trim, they are two mortar-pieces for a siege next summer, which I
have been making out of a pair of jack-boots, which Obadiah 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 Toby—they were hereditary. Then I
fear, quoth my uncle Toby, Trim has cut off the entail.—I have only
cut off the tops, an’ please your honour, cried Trim——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
Roger Shandy wore them at the battle of Marston-Moor.—I declare I
would not have taken ten pounds for them.——I’ll pay you the money,
brother Shandy, quoth my uncle Toby, 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.——

Brother Toby, replied my father, altering his tone, you care not what
money you dissipate and throw away, provided, continued he, ’tis but
upon a SIEGE.——Have I not one hundred and twenty pounds a year, besides
my half pay? cried my uncle Toby.—What is that—replied my father
hastily—to ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots?—twelve guineas for your
pontoons?—half as much for your Dutch draw-bridge?—to say nothing
of the train of little brass artillery you bespoke last week, with
twenty other preparations for the siege of Messina: believe me, dear
brother Toby, 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 Toby, 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 Toby, so long as we know
’tis for the good of the nation?——

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 Trim—and
the generous (though hobby-horsical) gallantry of my uncle Toby,
brought him into perfect good humour with them in an instant.

Generous souls!—God prosper you both, and your mortar-pieces too! quoth
my father to himself.

C H A P. XVI

ALL is quiet and hush, cried my father, at least above stairs—I hear
not one foot stirring.—Prithee Trim, who’s in the kitchen? There is
no one soul in the kitchen, answered Trim, making a low bow as he
spoke, except Dr. Slop.—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. Slop 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 Trim, in making
a bridge.——’Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle Toby:——pray,
give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and tell him I thank him
heartily.

You must know, my uncle Toby mistook the bridge—as widely as my
father mistook the mortars:——but to understand how my uncle Toby
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 Toby aright, I must give
you some account of an adventure of Trim’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 Toby’s amours with widow
Wadman, in which corporal Trim was no mean actor—or else in the
middle of his and my uncle Toby’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.

—What would your worship have me to do in this case?

—Tell it, Mr. Shandy, by all means.—You are a fool, Tristram, if
you do.

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?

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.

C H A P. XVII

THO’ the shock my uncle Toby received the year after the demolition
of Dunkirk, in his affair with widow Wadman, had fixed him in a
resolution never more to think of the sex—or of aught which belonged to
it;—yet corporal Trim had made no such bargain with himself. Indeed
in my uncle Toby’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 Trim’s case there was a
concurrence of nothing in the world, but of him and Bridget 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 Toby 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 Toby sat
down before the mistress—corporal Trim incontinently took ground
before the maid.

Now, my dear friend Garrick, 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 Trim’s and my uncle
Toby’s pattern.——I care not what Aristotle, or Pacuvius, or
Bossu, or Ricaboni say—(though I never read one of them)——there is
not a greater difference between a single-horse chair and madam
Pompadour’s vis-a-vis; 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.

After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my
uncle Toby’s quarter, a most minute account of every particular of
which shall be given in its proper place, my uncle Toby, honest man!
found it necessary to draw off his forces and raise the siege somewhat
indignantly.

Corporal Trim, 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 Bridget 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
Bridget a—

Precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five years;
that is from the demolition of Dunkirk in the year 13, to the latter
end of my uncle Toby’s campaign in the year 18, which was about six
or seven weeks before the time I’m speaking of.——When Trim, as his
custom was, after he had put my uncle Toby 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 Bridget.

As the corporal thought there was nothing in the world so well worth
shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle Toby had made,
Trim 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 Toby’s
curious draw-bridge, constructed and painted after the Dutch fashion,
and which went quite across the ditch—was broke down, and somehow or
other crushed all to pieces that very night.

My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle
Toby’s hobby-horse; he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever
gentleman mounted; and indeed unless my uncle Toby 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 Toby! 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 Toby would
reply—I have told it you twenty times, word for word as Trim told it
me.—Prithee, how was it then, corporal? my father would cry, turning to
Trim.—It was a mere misfortune, an’ please your honour;——I was
shewing Mrs. Bridget our fortifications, and in going too near the
edge of the fosse, I unfortunately slipp’d in——Very well, Trim! 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. Bridget, I dragg’d her after me, by means of which
she fell backwards soss against the bridge——and Trim’s foot (my uncle
Toby 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 Toby would add, that the poor fellow did not break his
leg.——Ay truly, my father would say——a limb is soon broke, brother
Toby, 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.

At other times, but especially when my uncle Toby 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 BATTERING-RAMS of the ancients—the VINEA which
Alexander made use of at the siege of Troy.—He would tell my uncle
Toby of the CATAPULTÆ of the Syrians, 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 BALLISTA which Marcellinus makes so much rout
about!—the terrible effects of the PYRABOLI, which cast fire;—the
danger of the TEREBRA and SCORPIO, which cast javelins.——But what are
these, would he say, to the destructive machinery of corporal
Trim?—Believe me, brother Toby, no bridge, or bastion, or
sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold out
against such artillery.

My uncle Toby 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 Toby 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 Toby 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!

C H A P. XVIII

THE draw-bridge being held irreparable, Trim was ordered directly to
set about another——but not upon the same model: for cardinal
Alberoni’s intrigues at that time being discovered, and my uncle
Toby rightly foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out
betwixt Spain and the Empire, and that the operations of the ensuing
campaign must in all likelihood be either in Naples or Sicily——he
determined upon an Italian bridge—(my uncle Toby, 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 Toby in the
cabinet, as my uncle Toby took it of him in the field——convinced him,
that if the king of Spain and the Emperor went together by the ears,
England and France and Holland must, by force of their
pre-engagements, all enter the lists too;——and if so, he would say, the
combatants, brother Toby, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it
again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of Flanders;—then
what will you do with your Italian bridge?

—We will go on with it then upon the old model, cried my uncle Toby.

When corporal Trim had about half finished it in that style——my uncle
Toby 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 Toby 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?

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.

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 Spires
before its destruction—and one now at Brisac, if I mistake not;—but
my father advising my uncle Toby, 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 d’Hôpital ’s
invention, which the younger Bernouilli has so well and learnedly
described, as your worships may see——Act. Erud. Lips. 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.

My uncle Toby understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man
in England—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 Toby to Trim.

C H A P. XIX

WHEN Trim came in and told my father, that Dr. Slop was in the
kitchen, and busy in making a bridge—my uncle Toby——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. Slop was making a model
of the marquis d’Hôpital ’s bridge.——’tis very obliging in him, quoth
my uncle Toby;—pray give my humble service to Dr. Slop, Trim, and
tell him I thank him heartily.

Had my uncle Toby’s head been a Savoyard ’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 Toby’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——

When Trim’s answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows,
and twisted it to pieces.

C H A P. XX

——THIS unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father——God bless
your honour, cried Trim, ’tis a bridge for master’s nose.——In
bringing him into the world with his vile instruments, he has crushed
his nose, Susannah 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 Susannah ’s stays, to raise it up.

——Lead me, brother Toby, cried my father, to my room this instant.

C H A P. XXI

FROM 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.

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, Tristram,
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!

C H A P. XXII

——I WON’T 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.”

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.

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 Toby sat him down in it.

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 Toby 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.

C H A P. XXIII

——“ALL is not gain that is got into the purse.”—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.

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.

To explain this, I must leave him upon the bed for half an hour—and my
uncle Toby in his old fringed chair sitting beside him.

C H A P. XXIV

——I THINK 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.—

—“Because,” replied my great-grandmother, “you have little or no nose,
Sir.”—

Now before I venture to make use of the word Nose 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 a Will o’
the Wisp, 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.

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.

——Here are two senses, cried Eugenius, as we walk’d along, pointing
with the fore finger of his right hand to the word Crevice, 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 Eugenius. Eugenius, said I,
stepping before him, and laying my hand upon his breast——to define—is
to distrust.——Thus I triumph’d over Eugenius; but I triumph’d over
him as I always do, like a fool.——’Tis my comfort, however, I am not an
obstinate one: therefore

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 Nose, throughout all this long
chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word
Nose occurs—I declare, by that word I mean a nose, and nothing more,
or less.

C H A P. XXV

——“BECAUSE,” quoth my great grandmother, repeating the words again—“you
have little or no nose, Sir.”——

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
Pantagruel found dwelling upon the island of ENNASIN.——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.——

—’Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs.

—’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.

——My great-grandfather was convinced.—He untwisted the paper, and
signed the article.

C H A P. XXVI

——WHAT an unconscionable jointure, my dear, do we pay out of this small
estate of ours, quoth my grandmother to my grandfather.

My father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose, my dear, saving
the mark, than there is upon the back of my hand.

—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 Michaelmas and Lady-day,)—during all
that time.

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 Hem! 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.

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!

For three generations at least this tenet in favour of long noses had
gradually been taking root in our family.——TRADITION was all along on
its side, and INTEREST 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.

He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that
he did not conceive how the greatest family in England 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 Shandy family rank’d very
high in king Harry 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.

——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.

——What a life of it has an author, at this pass!

C H A P. XXVII

IT 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.”

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!

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.

I am aware that Didius, the great civilian, will contest this point;
and cry out against me, Whence comes this man’s right to this apple?
ex confesso, he will say—things were in a state of nature—The apple,
is as much Frank’s apple as John’s. Pray, Mr. Shandy, 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.

Brother Didius, Tribonius will answer—(now Tribonius the civilian
and church lawyer’s beard being three inches and a half and three
eighths longer than Didius his beard—I’m glad he takes up the cudgels
for me, so I give myself no farther trouble about the answer.)—Brother
Didius, Tribonius will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it
in the fragments of Gregorius and Hermogines’s codes, and in all
the codes from Justinian’s down to the codes of Louis and Des
Eaux—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 John’s apple.

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 Toby would a
citadel.

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 Toby’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 Toby 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.——

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 Toby, 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 Trim 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.

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 Shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle
Toby, shall never be demolish’d.

C H A P. XXVIII

MY 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
Bruscambille’s prologue upon long noses, almost for nothing—for he
gave no more for Bruscambille 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 Bruscambilles
in Christendom—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 Bruscambille into his bosom——hied home from
Piccadilly to Coleman-street with it, as he would have hied home
with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from Bruscambille
all the way.

To those who do not yet know of which gender Bruscambille
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 Bruscambille 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 Prignitz—purchased Scroderus, Andrea
Paraeus, Bouchet’s Evening Conferences, and above all, the great and
learned Hafen Slawkenbergius; of which, as I shall have much to say
by-and-bye—I will say nothing now.

C H A P. XXIX

OF 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
Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and
venerable Erasmus, 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, 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, till like Tickletoby’s mare, you break a
strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt.—You need not
kill him.—

—And pray who was Tickletoby’s mare?—’tis just as discreditable and
unscholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb.
con.) the second Punic war broke out.—Who was Tickletoby’s
mare!—Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read—or by the
knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon—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.


Marble image


Marble image

C H A P. XXX

“NIHIL me paenitet hujus nasi,” quoth Pamphagus;——that is—“My nose
has been the making of me.”——“Nec est cur poeniteat,” replies
Cocles; that is, “How the duce should such a nose fail?”

The doctrine, you see, was laid down by Erasmus, 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 Erasmus, 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 Toby, 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.

My father read on.——

Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that
besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by Erasmus,
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, ad ixcitandum focum (to
stir up the fire.)

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 Toby, cried my father, of Erasmus 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 Toby, how I have mended the sense.——But you have
marr’d a word, replied my uncle Toby.—My father put on his
spectacles——bit his lip——and tore out the leaf in a passion.

C H A P. XXXI

O SLAWKENBERGIUS! thou faithful analyzer of my Disgrazias—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,
Slawkenbergius! 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, Slawkenbergius!
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 FOLIO for them, upon the subject of their
noses.

How the communication was conveyed into Slawkenbergius’s
sensorium——so that Slawkenbergius should know whose finger touch’d
the key—and whose hand it was that blew the bellows—as Hafen
Slawkenbergius has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and
ten years——we can only raise conjectures.

Slawkenbergius was play’d upon, for aught I know, like one of
Whitefield’s disciples——that is, with such a distinct intelligence,
Sir, of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon
his instrument——as to make all reasoning upon it needless.

——For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius 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 Slawkenbergius’s book is in Latin, and not a
little prolix in this passage—ever since I understood, quoth
Slawkenbergius, any thing—or rather what was what——and could
perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by
all who had gone before;——have I Slawkenbergius, felt a strong
impulse, with a mighty and unresistible call within me, to gird up
myself to this undertaking.

And to do justice to Slawkenbergius, 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 en-nich’d 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
dialectically——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
Slawkenbergius his book may properly be considered, not only as a
model—but as a thorough-stitched DIGEST and regular institute of
noses, comprehending in it all that is or can be needful to be known
about them.

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
Prignitz, 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 Silesia, which he had rummaged——has informed us,
that the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or bony parts of
human noses, in any given tract of country, except Crim Tartary,
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 Prignitz, who had lived many years
in Turky, supposes under the more immediate tutelage of Heaven)—it so
happens, and ever must, says Prignitz, that the excellency of the
nose is in a direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the
wearer’s fancy.

It is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all comprehended in
Slawkenbergius, that I say nothing likewise of Scroderus (Andrea)
who, all the world knows, set himself to oppugn Prignitz with great
violence—proving it in his own way, first logically, and then by a
series of stubborn facts, “That so far was Prignitz from the truth,
in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary—the
nose begat the fancy.”

—The learned suspected Scroderus of an indecent sophism in this—and
Prignitz cried out aloud in the dispute, that Scroderus had shifted
the idea upon him——but Scroderus went on, maintaining his thesis.

My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he
should take in this affair; when Ambrose Paræus decided it in a
moment, and by overthrowing the systems, both of Prignitz and
Scroderus, drove my father out of both sides of the controversy at
once.

Be witness——

I don’t acquaint the learned reader—in saying it, I mention it only to
shew the learned, I know the fact myself——

That this Ambrose Paræus was chief surgeon and nose-mender to
Francis the ninth of France, 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 Taliacotius’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.

Now Ambrose Paræus convinced my father, that the true and efficient
cause of what had engaged so much the attention of the world, and upon
which Prignitz and Scroderus 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 puisne 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 ad mensuram suam
legitimam;——but that in case of the flaccidity and softness of the
nurse or mother’s breast—by sinking into it, quoth Paraeus, as into
so much butter, the nose was comforted, nourish’d, plump’d up,
refresh’d, refocillated, and set a growing for ever.

I have but two things to observe of Paraeus; 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!

And, secondly, that besides the systems of Prignitz and Scroderus,
which Ambrose Paræus 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 Toby, quite upside down.

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.

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 Toby’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.——Trim insists
upon being tried by a court-martial—the cow to be shot—Slop to be
crucifix’d—myself to be tristram’d 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 Toby 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 Hafen Slawkenbergius’s folio, Sir, to finish——a
dialogue between my father and my uncle Toby, upon the solution of
Prignitz, Scroderus, Ambrose Paræus, Panocrates, and Grangousier to
relate—a tale out of Slawkenbergius 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!

C H A P. XXXII

THERE 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 SHANDY FAMILY.

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 Toby’s too.

My uncle Toby 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 Prignitz and
Scroderus’s solutions into it.

Whether they were above my uncle Toby’s reason——or contrary to it——or
that his brain was like damp 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 Prignitz and
Scroderus’s doctrines——I say not—let schoolmen—scullions, anatomists,
and engineers, fight for it among themselves——

’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 Toby,
and render out of Slawkenbergius’s Latin, 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 Toby’s eyes——my father’s ideas ran on as much faster
than the translation, as the translation outmoved my uncle
Toby’s——neither the one or the other added much to the perspicuity of
my father’s lecture.

C H A P. XXXIII

THE 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 INTUITION;—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——

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 medius terminus);
just as a man, as Locke 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 juxta-position.

Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his
systems of noses, and observed my uncle Toby’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 Toby had got hold of the medius terminus, 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 Toby not to
discuss——but comprehend—to hold the grains and scruples of
learning——not to weigh them.——My uncle Toby, as you will read in
the next chapter, did neither the one or the other.

C H A P. XXXIV

’TIS a pity, cried my father one winter’s night, after a three hours
painful translation of Slawkenbergius——’tis a pity, cried my father,
putting my mother’s threadpaper into the book for a mark, as he
spoke——that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such
impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself
sometimes up upon the closest siege.——

Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle
Toby’s fancy, during the time of my father’s explanation of
Prignitz 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 medius terminus——my uncle Toby was in fact as ignorant of
the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, as if my father had been
translating Hafen Slawkenbergius from the Latin tongue into the
Cherokee. But the word siege, like a talismanic power, in my
father’s metaphor, wafting back my uncle Toby’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.

’Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side,
brother Toby——considering what ingenuity these learned men have all
shewn in their solutions of noses.——Can noses be dissolved? replied my
uncle Toby.

——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 Slawkenbergius’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 Toby’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.

’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 Toby’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 quære of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him
in his hobby-horsical career.

’Twas all one to my uncle Toby——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.

By all that’s good! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself,
and taking the oath out of Ernulphus’s digest of curses——(though to
do my father justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. Slop in the
affair of Ernulphus) which he as seldom committed as any man upon
earth)——By all that’s good and great! brother Toby, 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 solutions
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 Toby——why one man’s nose is longer than another’s,
but because that God pleases to have it so.——That is Grangousier’s
solution, said my father.—’Tis he, continued my uncle Toby, 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 Toby’s
character——that he feared God, and reverenced religion.——So the moment
my father finished his remark——my uncle Toby fell a whistling
Lillabullero with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.—

What is become of my wife’s thread-paper?

C H A P. XXXV

NO 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
Slawkenbergius. Slawkenbergius 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 Slawkenbergius
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 matin, noon, and vespers was Hafen
Slawkenbergius 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.

I am not such a bigot to Slawkenbergius 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 Hafen Slawkenbergius,
is his tales——and, considering he was a German, 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 Slawkenbergius 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.

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.

S L A W K E N B E R G I I

F A B E L L A[8]

VESPERA quâdam frigidula, posteriori in parte mensis Augusti,
peregrinus, mulo fusco colore incidens, manticâ a tergo, paucis
indusiis, binis calceis, braccisque sericis coccineis repleta,
Argentoratum ingressus est.

Militi eum percontanti, quum portus intraret dixit, se apud Nasorum
promontorium fuisse, Francofurtum proficisci, et Argentoratum, transitu
ad fines Sarmatiæ mensis intervallo, reversurum.

Miles peregrini in faciem suspexit——Di boni, nova forma nasi!

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.

Dolet mihi, ait miles, tympanistam nanum et valgum alloquens, virum
adeo urbanum vaginam perdidisse: itinerari haud poterit nudâ acinaci;
neque vaginam toto Argentorato, habilem inveniet.——Nullam unquam
habui, respondit peregrinus respiciens——seque comiter inclinans—hoc
more gesto, nudam acinacem elevans, mulo lentò progrediente, ut nasum
tueri possim.

Non immerito, benigne peregrine, respondit miles.

Nihili aestimo, ait ille tympanista, e pergamenâ factitius est.

Prout christianus sum, inquit miles, nasus ille, ni sexties major fit,
meo esset conformis.

Crepitare audivi ait tympanista.

Mehercule! sanguinem emisit, respondit miles.

Miseret me, inquit tympanista, qui non ambo tetigimus!

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.

Quantus nasus! æque longus est, ait tubicina, ac tuba.

Et ex eodem metallo, ait tubicen, velut sternutamento audias.

Tantum abest, respondit illa, quod fistulam dulcedine vincit.

Æneus est, ait tubicen.

Nequaquam, respondit uxor.

Rursum affirmo, ait tubicen, quod æneus est.

Rem penitus explorabo; prius, enim digito tangam, ait uxor, quam
dormivero.

Mulus peregrini gradu lento progressus est, ut unumquodque verbum
controversiæ, non tantum inter militem et tympanistam, verum etiam
inter tubicinem et uxorum ejus, audiret.

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.

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.

Peregrinus mulo descendens stabulo includi, et manticam inferri
jussit: quâ apertâ et coccineis sericis femoralibus extractis cum
argento laciniato Περιζομαυτε, his sese induit, statimque, acinaci in
manu, ad forum deambulavit.

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.

Francofurtum proficiscor, ait ille, et Argentoratum quatuor abhinc
hebdomadis revertar.

Bene curasti hoc jumentam? (ait) muli faciem manu demulcens—me,
manticamque meam, plus sexcentis mille passibus portavit.

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?

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?

Dolus inest, anime mi, ait hospes—nasus est falsus.

Verus est, respondit uxor——

Ex abiete factus est, ait ille, terebinthinum olet—

Carbunculus inest, ait uxor.

Mortuus est nasus, respondit hospes.

Vivus est ait illa,—et si ipsa vivam tangam.

Votum feci sancto Nicolao, ait peregrinus, nasum meum intactum fore
usque ad—Quodnam tempus? illico respondit illa.

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.

S L A W K E N B E R G I U S’s

T A L E

IT was one cool refreshing evening, at the close of a very sultry day,
in the latter end of the month of August, 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 Strasburg.

He told the centinel, who questioned him as he entered the gates, that
he had been at the Promontory of NOSES—was going on to Frankfort——and
should be back again at Strasburg that day month, in his way to the
borders of Crim Tartary.

The centinel looked up into the stranger’s face——he never saw such a
Nose in his life!

—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.

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 Strasburg.——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.

It is well worth it, gentle stranger, replied the centinel.

——’Tis not worth a single stiver, said the bandy-legg’d drummer——’tis a
nose of parchment.

As I am a true catholic—except that it is six times as big—’tis a nose,
said the centinel, like my own.

—I heard it crackle, said the drummer.

By dunder, said the centinel, I saw it bleed.

What a pity, cried the bandy-legg’d drummer, we did not both touch it!

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.

Benedicity!——What a nose! ’tis as long, said the trumpeter’s wife, as
a trumpet.

And of the same metal said the trumpeter, as you hear by its sneezing.

’Tis as soft as a flute, said she.

—’Tis brass, said the trumpeter.

—’Tis a pudding’s end, said his wife.

I tell thee again, said the trumpeter, ’tis a brazen nose,

I’ll know the bottom of it, said the trumpeter’s wife, for I will touch
it with my finger before I sleep.

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.

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.

The stranger took no notice of the burgomaster’s wife——he was making a
vow to Saint Nicolas; 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 Strasburg, till chance brought him to the great
inn in the market-place over-against the church.

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.

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.

I am going forwards, said the stranger, for Frankfort——and shall be
back at Strasburg this day month.

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.

——’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.

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 Radagunda, 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 Strasburg! is it not, said she, whispering her
husband in his ear, is it not a noble nose?

’Tis an imposture, my dear, said the master of the inn——’tis a false
nose.

’Tis a true nose, said his wife.

’Tis made of fir-tree, said he, I smell the turpentine.——

There’s a pimple on it, said she.

’Tis a dead nose, replied the inn-keeper.

’Tis a live nose, and if I am alive myself, said the inn-keeper’s,
wife, I will touch it.

I have made a vow to saint Nicolas 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.

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.

The stranger had not got half a league on his way towards Frankfort
before all the city of Strasburg was in an uproar about his nose. The
Compline bells were just ringing to call the Strasburgers to their
devotions, and shut up the duties of the day in prayer:—no soul in all
Strasburg heard ’em—the city was like a swarm of bees——men, women,
and children, (the Compline 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?

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 Strasburg.

Whilst all this confusion and disorder triumphed throughout the great
city of Strasburg, was the courteous stranger going on as gently upon
his mule in his way to Frankfort, 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.

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.——

——Pugh!—’tis nothing but a thistle—never mind it—thou shalt have a
better supper at night.

——Banish’d from my country——my friends——from thee.——

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!

——But why to Frankfort?—is it that there is a hand unfelt, which
secretly is conducting me through these meanders and unsuspected
tracts?

——Stumbling! by saint Nicolas! every step—why at this rate we shall
be all night in getting in——

——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 Strasburg, where justice—but I had sworn! Come, thou
shalt drink—to St. Nicolas—O Julia!——What dost thou prick up thy ears
at?——’tis nothing but a man, &c.

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.

It was about the same hour when the tumult in Strasburg being abated
for that night,—the Strasburgers had all got quietly into their
beds—but not like the stranger, for the rest either of their minds or
bodies; queen Mab, 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 Strasburg to hold them. The
abbess of Quedlingberg, who with the four great dignitaries of her
chapter, the prioress, the deaness, the sub-chantress, and senior
canonness, had that week come to Strasburg to consult the university
upon a case of conscience relating to their placket- holes——was ill all
the night.

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.

The penitentiaries of the third order of saint Francis——the nuns of
mount Calvary——the Præmonstratenses——the Clunienses[9]——the
Carthusians, 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 Quedlingberg—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 Antony 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.

The nuns of saint Ursula acted the wisest—they never attempted to go
to bed at all.

The dean of Strasburg, 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
Ursula’s example.——

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 Strasburg—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 Strasburg, since Martin Luther,
with his doctrines, had turned the city upside down.

If the stranger’s nose took this liberty of thrusting himself thus into
the dishes[10] 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, (cries
Slawkenbergius with more gaiety of thought than I could have expected
from him) 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 Strasburgers
fantasies was so general—such an overpowering mastership had it got of
all the faculties of the Strasburgers 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
Strasburg spent their time in hearing tidings about it—every eye in
Strasburg languished to see it——every finger——every thumb in
Strasburg burned to touch it.

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 Frankfort, and would not return to
Strasburg 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 Strasburg—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.

I call not upon that heart which is a stranger to the throbs and
yearnings of curiosity, so excited, to justify the abbess of
Quedlingberg, the prioress, the deaness, and sub-chantress, for
sending at noon-day for the trumpeter’s wife: she went through the
streets of Strasburg 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.

The centinel and bandy-legg’d drummer!——nothing on this side of old
Athens could equal them! they read their lectures under the
city-gates to comers and goers, with all the pomp of a Chrysippus and
a Crantor in their porticos.

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 Strasburger came
crouding for intelligence—and every Strasburger had the intelligence
he wanted.

’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 Quedlingberg’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 Strasburg for
her auditory—But when a demonstrator in philosophy (cries
Slawkenbergius) has a trumpet for an apparatus, pray what rival in
science can pretend to be heard besides him?

Whilst the unlearned, thro’ these conduits of intelligence, were all
busied in getting down to the bottom of the well, where TRUTH 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——

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
Wens 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.

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 in Utera, without destroying the
statical balance of the fœtus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine
months before the time.——

——The opponents granted the theory——they denied the consequences.

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.

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.

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.

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?

He dies of a plethora, said they—or must spit blood, and in a fortnight
or three weeks go off in a consumption.——

——It happens otherwise—replied the opponents.——

It ought not, said they.

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.

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.

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 petitio principii, 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.

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——

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.

The civilians were still more concise: what they offered being more in
the nature of a decree——than a dispute.

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.

The only objection to this was, that if it proved any thing, it proved
the stranger’s nose was neither true nor false.

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 ex mero motu 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 Strasburg 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,[11] 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.

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
Strasburg——the Lutheran, founded in the year 1538 by Jacobus
Surmis, counsellor of the senate,——and the Popish, founded by
Leopold, arch-duke of Austria, were, during all this time,
employing the whole depth of their knowledge (except just what the
affair of the abbess of Quedlingberg’s placket-holes required)——in
determining the point of Martin Luther’s damnation.

The Popish doctors had undertaken to demonstrate à priori, that
from the necessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of
October 1483——when the moon was in the twelfth house, Jupiter,
Mars, and Venus in the third, the Sun, Saturn, and Mercury, 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.

By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition
all at once with Scorpio[12] (in reading this my father would always
shake his head) in the ninth house, with the Arabians allotted to
religion—it appeared that Martin Luther did not care one stiver about
the matter——and that from the horoscope directed to the conjunction of
Mars—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.

The little objection of the Lutheran doctors to this, was, that it
must certainly be the soul of another man, born Oct. 22, 83. which
was forced to sail down before the wind in that manner—inasmuch as it
appeared from the register of Islaben in the county of Mansfelt,
that Luther was not born in the year 1483, but in 84; and not on the
22d day of October, but on the 10th of November, the eve of
Martinmas day, from whence he had the name of Martin.

[——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 Quedlingberg——It is to tell the reader; that my father never read
this passage of Slawkenbergius to my uncle Toby, but with
triumph——not over my uncle Toby, for he never opposed him in it——but
over the whole world.

—Now you see, brother Toby, he would say, looking up, “that christian
names are not such indifferent things;”——had Luther here been called
by any other name but Martin, he would have been damn’d to all
eternity——Not that I look upon Martin, 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.

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 Hafen Slawkenbergius’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 NAMES and his NOSES.——I will
be bold to say, he might have read all the books in the Alexandrian
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.]

The two universities of Strasburg were hard tugging at this affair of
Luther’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 Martin 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 NAVIGATION, 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.

The abbess of Quedlingberg 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.

’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.

’Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side.

’Tis below reason, cried the others.

’Tis faith, cried one.

’Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other.

’Tis possible, cried the one.

’Tis impossible, said the other.

God’s power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do any thing.

He can do nothing, replied the Anti-nosarians, which implies
contradictions.

He can make matter think, said the Nosarians.

As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow’s ear, replied
the Anti-nosarians.

He cannot make two and two five, replied the Popish doctors.——’Tis
false, said their other opponents.——

Infinite power is infinite power, said the doctors who maintained the
reality of the nose.—It extends only to all possible things, replied
the Lutherans.

By God in heaven, cried the Popish doctors, he can make a nose, if he
thinks fit, as big as the steeple of Strasburg.

Now the steeple of Strasburg 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 Lutheran
doctors said No;—it could not.

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 Thomas Aquinas, and
Thomas Aquinas to the devil.

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.

Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.

The controversy about the attributes, &c. instead of cooling, on the
contrary had inflamed the Strasburgers 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 Parchmentarians, the
Brassarians, the Turpentarians, on one side—the Popish doctors on
the other, like Pantagruel and his companions in quest of the oracle
of the bottle, all embarked out of sight.

——The poor Strasburgers left upon the beach!

——What was to be done?—No delay—the uproar increased——every one in
disorder——the city gates set open.——

Unfortunate Strasbergers! 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.

On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to
Strasburg.

Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergius 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 Quedlingberg,
with the prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress, leading the
procession in one coach, and the dean of Strasburg, 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 Rhine——some this way——some that——all
set out at sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road.

Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale——I say Catastrophe
(cries Slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly
disposed, not only rejoiceth (gaudet) in the Catastrophe and
Peripeitia of a DRAMA, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential
and integrant parts of it——it has its Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis,
its Catastrophe or Peripeitia growing one out of the other in it,
in the order Aristotle first planted them——without which a tale had
better never be told at all, says Slawkenbergius, but be kept to a
man’s self.

In all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, have I Slawkenbergius
tied down every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done
this of the stranger and his nose.

——From his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of
Strasburg, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is
the Protasis or first entrance——where the characters of the Personæ
Dramatis are just touched in, and the subject slightly begun.

The Epitasis, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and
heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called the
Catastasis, 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 Strasburgers upon the beach in distress, is the
Catastasis or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their
bursting forth in the fifth act.

This commences with the setting out of the Strasburgers in the
Frankfort road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and
bringing the hero out of a state of agitation (as Aristotle calls it)
to a state of rest and quietness.

This, says Hafen Slawkenbergius, constitutes the Catastrophe or
Peripeitia of my tale—and that is the part of it I am going to
relate.

We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep——he enters now upon the
stage.

—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 ifs or ands, let the traveller and his
horse pass by.

The traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to Strasburg
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 Strasburg
this night.—Strasburg!——the great Strasburg!——Strasburg, the
capital of all Alsatia! Strasburg, an imperial city! Strasburg, a
sovereign state! Strasburg, garrisoned with five thousand of the best
troops in all the world!—Alas! if I was at the gates of Strasburg
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.

——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.——

Alas! said the traveller, harassed as I am, I want nothing but a
bed.——I have one as soft as is in Alsatia, said the host.

——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
Jacinta, 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 Jacinta, 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 Jacinta, ’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 Diego.

The traveller was the brother of the Julia, so often invoked that
night by the stranger as he rode from Strasburg upon his mule; and
was come, on her part, in quest of him. He had accompanied his sister
from Valadolid across the Pyrenean mountains through France, 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.

——Julia had sunk under it——and had not been able to go a step farther
than to Lyons, 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 Diego; and having conjured her brother never to see
her face till he had found him out, and put the letter into his hands,
Julia took to her bed.

Fernandez (for that was her brother’s name)——tho’ the camp-bed was as
soft as any one in Alsace, yet he could not shut his eyes in it.——As
soon as it was day he rose, and hearing Diego was risen too, he
entered his chamber, and discharged his sister’s commission.

The letter was as follows:

“Seig. DIEGO,

“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.

“How could I know so little of myself, when I sent my Duenna to
forbid your coming more under my lattice? or how could I know so little
of you, Diego, as to imagine you would not have staid one day in
Valadolid to have given ease to my doubts?—Was I to be abandoned,
Diego, 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?

“In what manner Julia 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 Diego was wont to come.

“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 Diego! 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 Diego!

“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, Diego, but
oh! ’tis embittered still more by dying un———”

She could proceed no farther.

Slawkenbergius supposes the word intended was unconvinced, but her
strength would not enable her to finish her letter.

The heart of the courteous Diego over-flowed as he read the
letter——he ordered his mule forthwith and Fernandez’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
diseases, having thrown a piece of charcoal into the window——Diego
availed himself of it, and whilst the hostler was getting ready his
mule, he eased his mind against the wall as follows.

O  D  E.

Harsh and untuneful are the notes of love,

Unless my Julia strikes the key,

Her hand alone can touch the part,

Whose dulcet movement charms the heart,

And governs all the man with sympathetick sway.

         2d.

O Julia!

The lines were very natural——for they were nothing at all to the
purpose, says Slawkenbergius, and ’tis a pity there were no more of
them; but whether it was that Seig. Diego was slow in composing
verses—or the hostler quick in saddling mules——is not averred; certain
it was, that Diego’s mule and Fernandez’s horse were ready at the
door of the inn, before Diego was ready for his second stanza; so
without staying to finish his ode, they both mounted, sallied forth,
passed the Rhine, traversed Alsace, shaped their course towards
Lyons, and before the Strasburgers and the abbess of Quedlingberg
had set out on their cavalcade, had Fernandez, Diego, and his
Julia, crossed the Pyrenean mountains, and got safe to Valadolid.

’Tis needless to inform the geographical reader, that when Diego was
in Spain, it was not possible to meet the courteous stranger in the
Frankfort road; it is enough to say, that of all restless desires,
curiosity being the strongest——the Strasburgers felt the full force
of it; and that for three days and nights they were tossed to and fro
in the Frankfort 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.

As this revolution of the Strasburgers affairs is often spoken of,
and little understood, I will, in ten words, says Slawkenbergius,
give the world an explanation of it, and with it put an end to my tale.

Every body knows of the grand system of Universal Monarchy, wrote by
order of Mons. Colbert, and put in manuscript into the hands of
Lewis the fourteenth, in the year 1664.

’Tis as well known, that one branch out of many of that system, was the
getting possession of Strasburg, to favour an entrance at all times
into Suabia, in order to disturb the quiet of Germany——and that in
consequence of this plan, Strasburg unhappily fell at length into
their hands.

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.

What a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city! cries one
historian—The Strasburgers deemed it a diminution of their freedom to
receive an imperial garrison——so fell a prey to a French one.

The fate, says another, of the Strasburgers, 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 French pushed them open.

Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbergius, ’twas not the French,——’twas
CURIOSITY pushed them open——The French indeed, who are ever upon the
catch, when they saw the Strasburgers, men, women and children, all
marched out to follow the stranger’s nose——each man followed his own,
and marched in.

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 Strasburgers could not follow their business.

Alas! alas! cries Slawkenbergius, 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 NOSES.

The E N D of
Slawkenbergius’s TALE.

 [8] As Hafen Slawkenbergius de Nasis 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.

 [9] Hafen Slawkenbergius means the Benedictine nuns of Cluny,
 founded in the year 940, by Odo, abbé de Cluny.

 [10] Mr. Shandy’s compliments to orators——is very sensible that
 Slawkenbergius has here changed his metaphor——which he is very
 guilty of:——that as a translator, Mr. Shandy has all along done what
 he could to make him stick to it—but that here ’twas impossible.

 [11] 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.

 [12] Haec mira, satisque horrenda. Planetarum coitio sub Scorpio
 Asterismo in nona cœli statione, quam Arabes religioni deputabant
 efficit Martinum Lutherum 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.

——Lucas Gaurieus in Tractatu astrologico de præteritis multorum hominum
accidentibus per genituras examinatis.

C H A P. XXXVI

WITH 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?

——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?

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.

This tale, cried Slawkenbergius, 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 Slawkenbergius, as I know of no tale which could
possibly ever go down after it.

’Tis a tale indeed!

This sets out with the first interview in the inn at Lyons, when
Fernandez left the courteous stranger and his sister Julia alone in
her chamber, and is over-written.

The I N T R I C A C I E S

O F
Diego and Julia.

Heavens! thou art a strange creature, Slawkenbergius! 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
Slawkenbergius’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 English, 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.

C H A P. XXXVII

MY 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 Toby’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 Toby, 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.

Now whether the compression shortened my uncle Toby’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.

He broke silence as follows:

C H A P. XXXVIII

DID ever man, brother Toby, cried my father, raising himself upon his
elbow, and turning himself round to the opposite side of the bed, where
my uncle Toby was sitting in his old fringed chair, with his chin
resting upon his crutch——did ever a poor unfortunate man, brother
Toby, cried my father, receive so many lashes?——The most I ever saw
given, quoth my uncle Toby (ringing the bell at the bed’s head for
Trim) was to a grenadier, I think in Mackay’s regiment.

——Had my uncle Toby shot a bullet through my father’s heart, he could
not have fallen down with his nose upon the quilt more suddenly.

Bless me! said my uncle Toby.

C H A P. XXXIX

WAS it Mackay’s regiment, quoth my uncle Toby, where the poor
grenadier was so unmercifully whipp’d at Bruges about the ducats?—O
Christ! he was innocent! cried Trim, 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,
Trim, quoth my uncle Toby.——I never think of his, continued Trim,
and my poor brother Tom’s misfortunes, for we were all three
school-fellows, but I cry like a coward.——Tears are no proof of
cowardice, Trim.—I drop them oft-times myself, cried my uncle
Toby.——I know your honour does, replied Trim, and so am not ashamed
of it myself.—But to think, may it please your honour, continued
Trim, 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 Tom! to be tortured upon a rack for nothing—but marrying
a Jew’s widow who sold sausages—honest Dick Johnson’s soul to be
scourged out of his body, for the ducats another man put into his
knapsack!—O!—these are misfortunes, cried Trim,—pulling out his
handkerchief—these are misfortunes, may it please your honour, worth
lying down and crying over.

—My father could not help blushing.

’Twould be a pity, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, 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, Trim, replied my uncle Toby; 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, Trim—and hast outlived thy
friends.——An’ please your honour, never fear, replied Trim,
chearily.——But I would have thee never fear, Trim, replied my uncle
Toby, and therefore, continued my uncle Toby, throwing down his
crutch, and getting up upon his legs as he uttered the word
therefore—in recompence, Trim, 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, Trim, for a penny.
Trim attempted to thank my uncle Toby—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.

——I have left Trim my bowling-green, cried my uncle Toby——My father
smiled.——I have left him moreover a pension, continued my uncle
Toby.——My father looked grave.

C H A P. XL

IS this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of PENSIONS and
GRENADIERS?

C H A P. XLI

WHEN my uncle Toby first mentioned the grenadier, my father, I said,
fell down with his nose flat to the quilt, and as suddenly as if my
uncle Toby 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
Trim 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.

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 Toby—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 Toby; 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 Toby as follows:

C H A P. XLII

WHEN I reflect, brother Toby, upon MAN; 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 Toby, 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 Toby, 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 Toby——That’s another concern, said my
father testily—But I say Toby, when one runs over the catalogue of
all the cross-reckonings and sorrowful Items 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 Toby, looking up, and pressing the palms of his
hands close together——’tis not from our own strength, brother
Shandy——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.

——That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of untying it,——But
give me leave to lead you, brother Toby, a little deeper into the
mystery.

With all my heart, replied my uncle Toby.

My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which
Socrates is so finely painted by Raffael in his school of Athens;
which your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even
the particular manner of the reasoning of Socrates 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——“You grant me this——and this: and
this, and this, I don’t ask of you—they follow of themselves in
course.”

So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his finger and
his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle Toby as he sat in his old
fringed chair, valanced around with party-coloured worsted bobs——O
Garrick!——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.

C H A P. XLIII

THOUGH 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 Toby, that there is a secret
spring within us.—Which spring, said my uncle Toby, 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 Toby.——Figuratively
speaking, dear Toby, 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.

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 GEORGE or
EDWARD would have spread around it.

But alas! continued my father, as the greatest evil has befallen him——I
must counteract and undo it with the greatest good.

He shall be christened Trismegistus, brother.

I wish it may answer——replied my uncle Toby, rising up.

C H A P. XLIV

WHAT a chapter of chances, said my father, turning himself about upon
the first landing, as he and my uncle Toby 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 Toby, and calculate it
fairly——I know no more of calculation than this balluster, said my
uncle Toby (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 Toby—I thought, quoth my father, (rubbing his
shin) you had known nothing of calculations, brother Toby.

a mere chance, said my uncle Toby.——Then it adds one to the
chapter——replied my father.

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 Toby’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.

Take pen and ink in hand, and calculate it fairly, brother Toby, 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.

It might have been worse, replied my uncle Toby.——I don’t comprehend,
said my father.——Suppose the hip had presented, replied my uncle
Toby, as Dr. Slop foreboded.

My father reflected half a minute—looked down——touched the middle of
his forehead slightly with his finger——

—True, said he.

C H A P. XLV

IS 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 Toby 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, Shandy——I drop it—Strike a line here across the
paper, Tristram—I strike it—and hey for a new chapter.

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?

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
Diana’s temple—you must read Longinus—read away—if you are not a
jot the wiser by reading him the first time over—never fear—read him
again—Avicenna and Licetus read Aristotle’s metaphysicks forty
times through a-piece, and never understood a single word.—But mark the
consequence—Avicenna turned out a desperate writer at all kinds of
writing—for he wrote books de omni scribili; and for Licetus
(Fortunio) though all the world knows he was born a fœtus,[13] 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 Gonopsychanthropologia,
upon the origin of the human soul.

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.

 [13] Ce Fœtus 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.)

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.

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 Vraisemblance n’est pas toujours du
côté la Verité.

Il n’avoit que dix neuf ans lorsqu’il composa Gonopsychanthropologia de
Origine Animæ humanæ.

(Les Enfans celebres, revûs & corrigés par M. de la Monnoye de
l’Academie Françoise.

C H A P. XLVI

WE shall bring all things to rights, said my father, setting his foot
upon the first step from the landing.—This Trismegistus, continued my
father, drawing his leg back and turning to my uncle Toby——was the
greatest (Toby) of all earthly beings—he was the greatest king——the
greatest lawgiver——the greatest philosopher——and the greatest
priest——and engineer—said my uncle Toby.

——In course, said my father.

C H A P. XLVII

—AND how does your mistress? cried my father, taking the same step over
again from the landing, and calling to Susannah, 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 Susannah, 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 Toby,
’tis ever the precise answer——And how is the child, pray?——No answer.
And where is Dr. Slop? added my father, raising his voice aloud, and
looking over the ballusters—Susannah was out of hearing.

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 Toby——of all the puzzling riddles, said he, in a
marriage state,——of which you may trust me, brother Toby, there are
more asses loads than all Job’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.

I think rather, replied my uncle Toby, 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 Shandy, said my uncle
Toby—’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.

God bless / Deuce take ’em all—said my uncle Toby and my father, each
to himself.

C H A P. XVLIII

HOLLA!——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 Toby off the stairs, and to put them to bed.

—’Tis even high time; for except a short nap, which they both got
whilst Trim 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
Slop was led into the back parlour in that dirty pickle by Obadiah.

Was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—and to take
up—Truce.

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.

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[14]—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.

Will this be good for your worships eyes?

It will do well for mine; and, was it not that my OPINIONS 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.

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 Horace 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.—

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.

As for the propagation of Geese—I give myself no concern—Nature is
all-bountiful—I shall never want tools to work with.

—So then, friend! you have got my father and my uncle Toby 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.

 [14] According to the preceding Editions.

C H A P. XLIX

—THEN reach me my breeches off the chair, said my father to
Susannah.—There is not a moment’s time to dress you, Sir, cried
Susannah—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 Susannah, the child’s in a fit.—And
where’s Mr. Yorick?—Never where he should be, said Susannah, 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 Shandy is the godfather, whether it should not be called
after him.

Were one sure, said my father to himself, scratching his eye-brow, that
the child was expiring, one might as well compliment my brother Toby
as not—and it would be a pity, in such a case, to throw away so great a
name as Trismegistus upon him——but he may recover.

No, no,——said my father to Susannah, I’ll get up——There is no time,
cried Susannah, the child’s as black as my shoe. Trismegistus, said
my father——But stay—thou art a leaky vessel, Susannah, added my
father; canst thou carry Trismegistus in thy head, the length of the
gallery without scattering?——Can I? cried Susannah, 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.

Susannah ran with all speed along the gallery.

My father made all possible speed to find his breeches.

Susannah got the start, and kept it—’Tis Tris—something, cried
Susannah—There is no christian-name in the world, said the curate,
beginning with Tris—but Tristram. Then ’tis Tristram-gistus,
quoth Susannah.

——There is no gistus to it, noodle!—’tis my own name, replied the
curate, dipping his hand, as he spoke, into the bason—Tristram! said
he, &c. &c. &c. &c.—so Tristram was I called, and Tristram shall I
be to the day of my death.

My father followed Susannah, 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.

——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 Susannah.——And how does your mistress? As
well, said Susannah, 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 Susannah, 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 chamber-maids,
my chapter of pishes, and my chapter of button-holes.

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.

C H A P. L

I WISH I could write a chapter upon sleep.

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.

It is a fine subject.

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.

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.

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.

“God’s blessing,” said Sancho Pança, “be upon the man who first
invented this self-same thing called sleep—it covers a man all over
like a cloak.”

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.

—Not that I altogether disapprove of what Montaigne advances upon
it—’tis admirable in its way—(I quote by memory.)

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 Bayle says in the affair of Liceti) ’est pas toujours du Côté
de la Verité.” And so much for sleep.

C H A P. LI

IF my wife will but venture him—brother Toby, Trismegistus shall be
dress’d and brought down to us, whilst you and I are getting our
breakfasts together.——

——Go, tell Susannah, Obadiah, to step here.

She is run up stairs, answered Obadiah, this very instant, sobbing
and crying, and wringing her hands as if her heart would break.

We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his head from
Obadiah, and looking wistfully in my uncle Toby’s face for some
time—we shall have a devilish month of it, brother Toby, said my
father, setting his arms a’kimbo, and shaking his head; fire, water,
women, wind—brother Toby!—’Tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle
Toby.——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 Toby, that
you and I possess ourselves, and sit here silent and unmoved——whilst
such a storm is whistling over our heads.——

And what’s the matter, Susannah? They have called the child
Tristram——and my mistress is just got out of an hysterick fit about
it——No!——’tis not my fault, said Susannah—I told him it was
Tristram-gistus.

——Make tea for yourself, brother Toby, 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!

—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.

——Go to the bowling-green for corporal Trim, said my uncle Toby,
speaking to Obadiah, as soon as my father left the room.

C H A P. LII

WHEN 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 NAME;—no.

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.

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 Nature would have given such immediate ease: She, dear Goddess, by
an instantaneous impulse, in all provoking cases, 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.

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.

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 Pythagoras, nor Plato, nor Solon, nor Lycurgus, nor
Mahomet, nor any one of your noted lawgivers, ever gave order about
them.

C H A P. LIII

YOUR honour, said Trim, shutting the parlour-door before he began to
speak, has heard, I imagine, of this unlucky accident——O yes, Trim,
said my uncle Toby, and it gives me great concern.—I am heartily
concerned too, but I hope your honour, replied Trim, will do me the
justice to believe, that it was not in the least owing to me.——To
thee—Trim?—cried my uncle Toby, looking kindly in his face——’twas
Susannah’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 Toby.

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.——Trim’s casuistry and address, under the cover of
his low bow, prevented all suspicion in my uncle Toby, so he went on
with what he had to say to Trim as follows:

——For my own part, Trim, though I can see little or no difference
betwixt my nephew’s being called Tristram or Trismegistus—yet as
the thing sits so near my brother’s heart, Trim——I would freely have
given a hundred pounds rather than it should have happened.——A hundred
pounds, an’ please your honour! replied Trim,—I would not give a
cherry-stone to boot.——Nor would I, Trim, upon my own account, quoth
my uncle Toby——but my brother, whom there is no arguing with in this
case—maintains that a great deal more depends, Trim, 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 Tristram—nay, he will have it, Trim, 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 Trim, as when they called me James Butler.——And for my
own part, said my uncle Toby, though I should blush to boast of
myself, Trim——yet had my name been Alexander, I could have done no
more at Namur than my duty.—Bless your honour! cried Trim,
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, Trim? cried my uncle Toby, looking firm.——Or when he enters
a breach? said Trim, 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 Trim, presenting his stick like a
firelock.——Or when he marches up the glacis? cried my uncle Toby,
looking warm and setting his foot upon his stool.——

C H A P. LIV

MY 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 Toby
was marching up the glacis——Trim recovered his arms——never was my
uncle Toby caught in riding at such a desperate rate in his life!
Alas! my uncle Toby! had not a weightier matter called forth all the
ready eloquence of my father—how hadst thou then and thy poor
HOBBY-HORSE too been insulted!

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 Toby, 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:

MY FATHER'S LAMENTATION

IT is in vain longer, said my father, addressing himself as much to
Ernulphus’s curse, which was laid upon the corner of the
chimney-piece——as to my uncle Toby 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
Toby, or the sins and follies of the Shandy 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 Shandy, said my uncle Toby—if it
was so—Unhappy Tristram! 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 Toby, 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 Toby——’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.——

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 Toby, 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 Toby——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
Toby.——Vent! cried my father, looking up.

But what was all this, my dear Toby, 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.——

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 per Cent. insurance, that
the fine net-work of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a
thousand tatters.

——Still we could have done.——Fool, coxcomb, puppy——give him but a
NOSE——Cripple, Dwarf, Driveller, Goosecap——shape him as you will) the
door of fortune stands open—O Licetus! Licetus! had I been blest with
a fœtus five inches long and a half, like thee—Fate might have done her
worst.

Still, brother Toby, there was one cast of the dye left for our child
after all—O Tristram! Tristram! Tristram!

We will send for Mr. Yorick, said my uncle Toby.

——You may send for whom you will, replied my father.

C H A P. LV

WHAT a rate have I gone on at, curvetting and striking it away, two up
and two down for three volumes[15] 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.

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 Ernulphus, said I.——But you have
squirted full in the faces of Mess. Le Moyne, De Romigny, and De
Marcilly, doctors of the Sorbonne.——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.

You have done it, replied my accuser.

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.

 [15] According to the preceding Editions.

C H A P. LVI

AS Francis the first of France 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[16]—It would not be
amiss, said the king, stirring up the embers with his cane, if this
good understanding betwixt ourselves and Switzerland 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
France.—Poo! poo! answered the king—there are more ways, Mons. le
Premier, of bribing states, besides that of giving money—I’ll pay
Switzerland the honour of standing godfather for my next child.——Your
majesty, said the minister, in so doing, would have all the grammarians
in Europe upon your back;——Switzerland, as a republic, being a
female, can in no construction be godfather.—She may be godmother,
replied Francis hastily—so announce my intentions by a courier
to-morrow morning.

I am astonished, said Francis the First, (that day fortnight)
speaking to his minister as he entered the closet, that we have had no
answer from Switzerland.——Sire, I wait upon you this moment, said
Mons. le Premier, 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.

In all reason, quoth the king—she will christen him Francis, or
Henry, or Lewis, 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?——Shadrach, Mesech, Abed-nego, replied the
minister.—By Saint Peter’s girdle, I will have nothing to do with the
Swiss, cried Francis the First, pulling up his breeches and walking
hastily across the floor.

Your majesty, replied the minister calmly, cannot bring yourself off.

We’ll pay them in money——said the king.

Sire, there are not sixty thousand crowns in the treasury, answered the
minister.——I’ll pawn the best jewel in my crown, quoth Francis the
First.

Your honour stands pawn’d already in this matter, answered Monsieur le
Premier.

Then, Mons. le Premier, said the king, by——we’ll go to war with ’em.

 [16] Vide Menagiana, Vol. I.

C H A P. LVII

ALBEIT, 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 Francis the First——nor in the affair of the nose—upon
Francis the Ninth—nor in the character of my uncle Toby——of
characterizing the militiating spirits of my country—the wound upon his
groin, is a wound to every comparison of that kind—nor by Trim—that I
meant the duke of Ormond—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 gall and other
bitter juices 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.

C H A P. LVIII

—BUT can the thing be undone, Yorick? said my father—for in my
opinion, continued he, it cannot. I am a vile canonist, replied
Yorick—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 Yorick——we want, Mr. Shandy, 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 Didius has so pressingly invited you—who
in your distress would miss such an occasion? All that is requisite,
continued Yorick, is to apprize Didius, and let him manage a
conversation after dinner so as to introduce the subject.—Then my
brother Toby, cried my father, clapping his two hands together, shall
go with us.

——Let my old tye-wig, quoth my uncle Toby, and my laced regimentals,
be hung to the fire all night, Trim.

C H A P. LX

—NO 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.

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 Toby’s, Trim’s, and Obadiah’s setting out and
journeying to the visitation at ****

We’ll go in the coach, said my father—Prithee, have the arms been
altered, Obadiah?—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 Shandy’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 Turpilius the
Roman, or Hans Holbein of Basil——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
bend-dexter, which since Harry the Eighth’s reign was honestly our
due——a bend-sinister, by some of these fatalities, had been drawn
quite across the field of the Shandy 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 bend-sinister was
taken out—but like the affair of the hinge, it was one of the many
things which the Destinies had set down in their books ever to be
grumbled at (and in wiser families than ours)—but never to be mended.

—Has the bend-sinister been brush’d out, I say? said my
father.——There has been nothing brush’d out, Sir, answered Obadiah,
but the lining. We’ll go o’horseback, said my father, turning to
Yorick—Of all things in the world, except politicks, the clergy know
the least of heraldry, said Yorick.—No matter for that, cried my
father——I should be sorry to appear with a blot in my escutcheon before
them.—Never mind the bend-sinister, said my uncle Toby, putting on
his tye-wig.——No, indeed, said my father—you may go with my aunt
Dinah to a visitation with a bend-sinister, if you think fit—My
poor uncle Toby blush’d. My father was vexed at himself.——No——my dear
brother Toby, 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
December, January, and February last winter—so if you please you
shall ride my wife’s pad——and as you are to preach, Yorick, you had
better make the best of your way before——and leave me to take care of
my brother Toby, and to follow at our own rates.

Now the chapter I was obliged to tear out, was the description of this
cavalcade, in which Corporal Trim and Obadiah, upon two
coach-horses a-breast, led the way as slow as a patrole——whilst my
uncle Toby, 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.

—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.

—This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that some of the
lowest and flattest compositions pass off very well——(as Yorick told
my uncle Toby one night) by siege.——My uncle Toby looked brisk at
the sound of the word siege, but could make neither head or tail of it.

I’m to preach at court next Sunday, said Homenas——run over my
notes——so I humm’d over doctor Homenas’s notes—the modulation’s very
well—’twill do, Homenas, 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 Montaigne
complained in a parallel accident)—had I found the declivity easy, or
the ascent accessible——certes I had been outwitted.——Your notes,
Homenas, 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.

=>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.

C H A P. LXI

——SEE if he is not cutting it into slips, and giving them about him to
light their pipes!——’Tis abominable, answered Didius; it should not
go unnoticed, said doctor Kysarcius—— => he was of the Kysarcii of
the Low Countries.

Methinks, said Didius, half rising from his chair, in order to remove
a bottle and a tall decanter, which stood in a direct line betwixt him
and Yorick——you might have spared this sarcastic stroke, and have hit
upon a more proper place, Mr. Yorick—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.

——I have got him fast hung up, quoth Didius to himself, upon one of
the two horns of my dilemma——let him get off as he can.

I have undergone such unspeakable torments, in bringing forth this
sermon, quoth Yorick, upon this occasion——that I declare, Didius, 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
Yorick, I had rather direct five words point-blank to the heart.—

As Yorick pronounced the word point-blank, my uncle Toby 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.

C H A P. LXII

ZOUNDS!————————————————————————Z——ds! cried Phutatorius, 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.

One or two who had very nice ears, and could distinguish the expression
and mixture of the two tones as plainly as a third or a fifth, 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.

Others who knew nothing of musical expression, and merely lent their
ears to the plain import of the word, imagined that Phutatorius,
who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the
cudgels out of Didius’s hands, in order to bemaul Yorick 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 Toby’s good-nature felt a
pang for what Yorick was about to undergo. But seeing Phutatorius
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.

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
Yorick, 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 Phutatorius’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 Phutatorius’s heart, by the stroke of surprize
which so strange a theory of preaching had excited.

How finely we argue upon mistaken facts!

There was not a soul busied in all these various reasonings upon the
monosyllable which Phutatorius uttered—who did not take this for
granted, proceeding upon it as from an axiom, namely, that
Phutatorius’s mind was intent upon the subject of debate which was
arising between Didius and Yorick; 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 Phutatorius 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 Galligaskins, 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 Yorick, who sat over-against
him——yet, I say, was Yorick never once in any one domicile of
Phutatorius’s brain——but the true cause of his exclamation lay at
least a yard below.

This I will endeavour to explain to you with all imaginable decency.

You must be informed then, that Gastripheres, 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— Gastripheres inforcing his
orders about them, that Didius, but Phutatorius especially, were
particularly fond of ’em.

About two minutes before the time that my uncle Toby interrupted
Yorick’s harangue—Gastripheres’s chesnuts were brought in—and as
Phutatorius’s fondness for ’em was uppermost in the waiter’s head, he
laid them directly before Phutatorius, wrapt up hot in a clean damask
napkin.

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
Phutatorius sat straddling under——it fell perpendicularly into that
particular aperture of Phutatorius’s breeches, for which, to the
shame and indelicacy of our language be it spoke, there is no chaste
word throughout all Johnson’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 Janus (in peace at
least) to be universally shut up.

The neglect of this punctilio in Phutatorius (which by-the-bye should
be a warning to all mankind) had opened a door to this accident.——

Accident I call it, in compliance to a received mode of speaking——but
in no opposition to the opinion either of Acrites or Mythogeras 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 Phutatorius for that filthy and obscene treatise de
Concubinis retinendis, which Phutatorius had published about twenty
years ago——and was that identical week going to give the world a second
edition of.

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 Phutatorius’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 Phutatorius’s perceiving it, or any one else at that
time.

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 Phutatorius’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 Phutatorius, 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.

With the best intelligence which all these messengers could bring him
back, Phutatorius 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 Newt or an Asker, 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 Phutatorius 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,
Phutatorius could no more help than he could the cause of it.

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 Phutatorius
to draw forth the chesnut, and throw it down with violence upon the
floor—and for Yorick to rise from his chair, and pick the chesnut up.

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
Euclid’s demonstrations, could they be brought to batter it in
breach, should not all have power to overthrow it.

Yorick, I said, picked up the chesnut which Phutatorius’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
Phutatorius’s head: He considered this act of Yorick’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 Yorick, who sat directly
over against Phutatorius, of slipping the chesnut in——and
consequently that he did it. The look of something more than suspicion,
which Phutatorius cast full upon Yorick as these thoughts arose,
too evidently spoke his opinion——and as Phutatorius 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.

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.

It was well known that Yorick had never a good opinion of the
treatise which Phutatorius had wrote de Concubinis retinendis, as a
thing which he feared had done hurt in the world——and ’twas easily
found out, that there was a mystical meaning in Yorick’s prank—and
that his chucking the chesnut hot into Phutatorius’s ***——***, was a
sarcastical fling at his book—the doctrines of which, they said, had
enflamed many an honest man in the same place.

This conceit awaken’d Somnolentus——made Agelastes smile——and if you
can recollect the precise look and air of a man’s face intent in
finding out a riddle——it threw Gastripheres’s into that form—and in
short was thought by many to be a master-stroke of arch-wit.

This, as the reader has seen from one end to the other, was as
groundless as the dreams of philosophy: Yorick, no doubt, as
Shakespeare said of his ancestor——“was a man of jest,” 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.

This heroic cast produced him inconveniences in many respects—in the
present it was followed by the fixed resentment of Phutatorius, who,
as Yorick 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.

But you must mark and carefully separate and distinguish these two
things in your mind.

——The smile was for the company.

——The threat was for Yorick.

C H A P. LXIII

—CAN you tell me, quoth Phutatorius, speaking to Gastripheres who
sat next to him——for one would not apply to a surgeon in so foolish an
affair——can you tell me, Gastripheres, what is best to take out the
fire?——Ask Eugenius, said Gastripheres.——That greatly depends, said
Eugenius, 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 Phutatorius,
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 Eugenius, I would
advise you, Phutatorius, 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 Yorick (who
sat next to his friend Eugenius) 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 Eugenius, and is, of any outward
application I would venture to recommend, the most anodyne and safe.

Was it my case, said Gastripheres, 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 Yorick.——And
besides, added Eugenius, 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 Phutatorius, that the second
edition of my treatise de Concubinis retinendis is at this instant in
the press.——You may take any leaf of it, said Eugenius——no matter
which.——Provided, quoth Yorick, there is no bawdry in it.——

They are just now, replied Phutatorius, printing off the ninth
chapter——which is the last chapter but one in the book.——Pray what is
the title of that chapter? said Yorick; making a respectful bow to
Phutatorius as he spoke.——I think, answered Phutatorius, ’tis that
de re concubinaria.

For Heaven’s sake keep out of that chapter, quoth Yorick.

——By all means—added Eugenius.

C H A P. LXIV

—NOW, quoth Didius, 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 Toby to himself]—and when baptism
was administer’d in Latin—[’Twas all in English, 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 Latin tongue,
baptized a child of Tom-o’stiles, in nomine patriæ & filia & spiritum
sanctos—the baptism was held null.——I beg your pardon, replied
Kysarcius——in that case, as the mistake was only the terminations,
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.

My father delighted in subtleties of this kind, and listen’d with
infinite attention.

Gastripheres, for example, continued Kysarcius, baptizes a child of
John Stradling’s in Gomine gatris, &c. &c. instead of in Nomine
patris, &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
Gomine does not signify a name, nor gatris a father.—What do they
signify? said my uncle Toby.—Nothing at all——quoth Yorick.——Ergo,
such a baptism is null, said Kysarcius.——

In course, answered Yorick, in a tone two parts jest and one part
earnest.——

But in the case cited, continued Kysarcius, where patriæ is put for
patris, filia for filii, 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 Didius, the intention of the
priest’s pronouncing them grammatically must have been proved to have
gone along with it.——————Right, answered Kysarcius; and of this,
brother Didius, we have an instance in a decree of the decretals of
Pope Leo the IIId.——But my brother’s child, cried my uncle Toby,
has nothing to do with the Pope——’tis the plain child of a Protestant
gentleman, christen’d Tristram against the wills and wishes both of
his father and mother, and all who are a-kin to it.——

If the wills and wishes, said Kysarcius, interrupting my uncle
Toby, of those only who stand related to Mr. Shandy’s child, were
to have weight in this matter, Mrs. Shandy, of all people, has the
least to do in it.——My uncle Toby 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.

——It has not only been a question, Captain Shandy, amongst the[17]
best lawyers and civilians in this land, continued Kysarcius, “Whether
the mother be of kin to her child,”—but, after much dispassionate
enquiry and jactitation of the arguments on all sides—it has been
adjudged for the negative—namely, “That the mother is not of kin to
her child.”[18] My father instantly clapp’d his hand upon my uncle
Toby’s mouth, under colour of whispering in his ear;—the truth was,
he was alarmed for Lillabullero—and having a great desire to hear
more of so curious an argument—he begg’d my uncle Toby, for heaven’s
sake, not to disappoint him in it.—My uncle Toby gave a nod—resumed
his pipe, and contenting himself with whistling Lillabullero
inwardly——Kysarcius, Didius, and Triptolemus went on with the
discourse as follows:

This determination, continued Kysarcius, 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 Suffolk’s case.——It
is cited in Brook, said Triptolemus——And taken notice of by Lord
Coke, added Didius.—And you may find it in Swinburn on
Testaments, said Kysarcius.

The case, Mr. Shandy, was this:

In the reign of Edward the Sixth, Charles duke of Suffolk 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 Harry 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.

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.

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 Canterbury and York,
with the master of the faculties, were all unanimously of opinion, That
the mother was not of[19] kin to her child.——

And what said the duchess of Suffolk to it? said my uncle Toby.

The unexpectedness of my uncle Toby’s question, confounded
Kysarcius more than the ablest advocate——He stopp’d a full minute,
looking in my uncle Toby’s face without replying——and in that single
minute Triptolemus put by him, and took the lead as follows.

’Tis a ground and principle in the law, said Triptolemus, 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, Liberi sunt de
sanguine patris & matris, sed pater & mater non sunt de sanguine
liberorum.

——But this, Triptolemus, 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 Triptolemus, the better opinion; because
the father, the mother, and the child, though they be three persons,
yet are they but (una caro[20]) one flesh; and consequently no degree
of kindred——or any method of acquiring one in nature.——There you push
the argument again too far, cried Didius——for there is no prohibition
in nature, 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 Kysarcius, of laying with his grandmother?——The young
gentleman, replied Yorick, whom Selden 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
Argumentum commune, added Yorick.——’Tis as good, replied
Eugenius, taking down his hat, as they deserve.

The company broke up.

 [17] Vide Swinburn on Testaments, Part 7. §8.

 [18] Vide Brook Abridg. Tit. Administr. N. 47.

 [19] Mater non numeratur inter consanguineos, Bald. in ult. C. de
 Verb. signific.

 [20] Vide Brook Abridg. tit. Administr. N .47.

C H A P. LXV

—AND pray, said my uncle Toby, leaning upon Yorick, 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, Yorick, said my uncle Toby, which way is this said affair of
Tristram at length settled by these learned men? Very satisfactorily,
replied Yorick; no mortal, Sir, has any concern with it——for Mrs.
Shandy the mother is nothing at all a-kin to him——and as the mother’s
is the surest side——Mr. Shandy, in course is still less than
nothing——In short, he is not as much a-kin to him, Sir, as I am.——

——That may well be, said my father, shaking his head.

——Let the learned say what they will, there must certainly, quoth my
uncle Toby, have been some sort of consanguinity betwixt the duchess
of Suffolk and her son.

The vulgar are of the same opinion, quoth Yorick, to this hour.

C H A P. LXVI

THOUGH 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 Hippocrates 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 Dinah.

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 Rome——he would go to law——he would
buy stock——he would buy John Hobson’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 Ox-moor, and send out my brother
Bobby immediately upon his travels.

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.

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 Missisippi-scheme, in which he was
an adventurer——yet the Ox-moor, which was a fine, large, whinny,
undrained, unimproved common, belonging to the Shandy-estate, had
almost as old a claim upon him: he had long and affectionately set his
heart upon turning it likewise to some account.

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 OX-MOOR
and my BROTHER, 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.

——People may laugh as they will—but the case was this.

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—tantum valet, my father would say, quantum
sonat.

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 Shandy unwhirl’d about Europe
in a post-chaise, and only because he was a heavy lad——would be using
him ten times worse than a Turk.

On the other hand, the case of the Ox-moor was full as hard.

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.

It had been moreover in possession of the Shandy-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
(Obadiah said) who understood the value of the land, to have rode
over it, and only seen the condition it was in.

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.

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 Toby—arguing with
Yorick, and talking over the whole affair of the Ox-moor with
Obadiah——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.

For to be sure, with proper helps, in the hands of some people, tho’
the Ox-moor 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 Bobby——let
Obadiah say what he would.——

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 Ox-moor, &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 Ox-moor
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 Toby——he knew no
more than his heels what to do.

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.

My father had certainly sunk under this evil, as certainly as he had
done under that of my CHRISTIAN NAME——had he not been rescued out of
it, as he was out of that, by a fresh evil——the misfortune of my
brother Bobby’s death.

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?

C H A P. LXVII

FROM this moment I am to be considered as heir-apparent to the Shandy
family——and it is from this point properly, that the story of my LIFE
and my OPINIONS 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 Adam. 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 name
the chapter of THINGS——and my next chapter to it, that is, the first
chapter of my next volume, if I live, shall be my chapter upon
WHISKERS, in order to keep up some sort of connection in my works.

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
Toby, 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
Tristram! Tristram! 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!——

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 declare.——I shall never get
all through in five minutes, that I fear——and the thing I hope 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 Jenny’s way—but who my Jenny is—and
which is the right and which the wrong end of a woman, is the thing to
be concealed—it shall be told you in the next chapter but one to my
chapter of Button-holes——and not one chapter before.

And now that you have just got to the end of these[21] three
volumes——the thing I have to ask is, how you feel your heads? my own
akes dismally!——as for your healths, I know, they are much better.—True
Shandeism, 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.

Was I left, like Sancho Pança, 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 WISE as they were MERRY; and
then should I be the happiest monarch, and they are the happiest people
under heaven.

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.

 [21] According to the preceding Editions.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME

Tristram Shandy

Tristram Shandy




THE
LIFE AND OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY,
GENTLEMAN
———
Volume the Third
———

Dixero si quid fortè jocosius, hoc mihi juris
Cum venia dabis.——                  HOR.

—Si quis calumnietur levius esse quam decet theologum, aut mordacius
quam deceat Christianum—non Ego, sed Democritus dixit.—               
 ERASMUS.

Si quis Clericus, aut Monachus, verba joculatoria, risum moventia,
sciebat, anathema esto.                 Second Council of CARTHAGE.

TO THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE
J  O  H  N,
LORD VISCOUNT SPENCER

MY LORD,

I HUMBLY beg leave to offer you these two Volumes[22]; 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.

I beg your Lordship will forgive me, if, at the same time I dedicate
this work to you, I join Lady SPENCER, in the liberty I take of
inscribing the story of Le Fever 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.

    I am,

MY LORD,
Your Lordship’s most devoted
and most humble Servant,

LAUR. STERNE.

 [22] Volumes V. and VI. in the first Edition.

C H A P.   I

IF 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.”

The London waggon confirmed me in my resolution; it hung tottering upon
the hill, scarce progressive, drag’d—drag’d up by eight heavy
beasts—“by main strength!——quoth I, nodding——but your betters draw the
same way——and something of every body’s!——O rare!”

Tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever be adding so much to the
bulk—so little to the stock?

Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by
pouring only out of one vessel into another?

Are we for ever to be twisting, and untwisting the same rope? for ever
in the same track—for ever at the same pace?

Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as
working-days, to be shewing the relicks of learning, as monks do the
relicks of their saints—without working one—one single miracle with
them?

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 miracle of nature, as Zoroaster in his book ωεσι φυσεως
called him—the SHEKINAH of the divine presence, as Chrysostom——the
image of God, as Moses——the ray of divinity, as Plato—the marvel
of marvels, as Aristotle—to go sneaking on at this
pitiful—pimping——pettifogging rate?

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 Great Britain, France, and Ireland, had the farcy
for his pains; and that there was a good farcical house, large enough
to hold—aye—and sublimate them, shag rag and bob-tail, male and
female, all together: and this leads me to the affair of
Whiskers——but, by what chain of ideas—I leave as a legacy in
mort-main to Prudes and Tartufs, to enjoy and make the most of.

UPON WHISKERS.

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.

THE FRAGMENT.

*   *   *   *   *   * *   *   *   *   *   *
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   * *   *   *   *
——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 Whiskers——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.

The old gentleman went on as follows:——Whiskers! cried the queen of
Navarre, dropping her knotting ball, as La Fosseuse uttered the
word——Whiskers, madam, said La Fosseuse, pinning the ball to the
queen’s apron, and making a courtesy as she repeated it.

La Fosseuse’s voice was naturally soft and low, yet ’twas an
articulate voice: and every letter of the word Whiskers fell
distinctly upon the queen of Navarre’s ear—Whiskers! cried the queen,
laying a greater stress upon the word, and as if she had still
distrusted her ears——Whiskers! replied La Fosseuse, repeating the
word a third time——There is not a cavalier, madam, of his age in
Navarre, continued the maid of honour, pressing the page’s interest
upon the queen, that has so gallant a pair——Of what? cried Margaret,
smiling—Of whiskers, said La Fosseuse, with infinite modesty.

The word Whiskers still stood its ground, and continued to be made
use of in most of the best companies throughout the little kingdom of
Navarre, notwithstanding the indiscreet use which La Fosseuse had
made of it: the truth was, La Fosseuse 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 Margaret, 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,——they were divided.

The excellency of the figure and mien of the young Sieur De Croix,
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 De Baussiere fell deeply in love with him,——La
Battarelle did the same—it was the finest weather for it, that ever
was remembered in Navarre——La Guyol, La Maronette, La Sabatiere, fell
in love with the Sieur De Croix also——La Rebours and La Fosseuse
knew better——De Croix had failed in an attempt to recommend himself
to La Rebours; and La Rebours and La Fosseuse were inseparable.

The queen of Navarre was sitting with her ladies in the painted
bow-window, facing the gate of the second court, as De Croix passed
through it—He is handsome, said the Lady Baussiere——He has a good
mien, said La Battarelle——He is finely shaped, said La Guyol—I
never saw an officer of the horse-guards in my life, said La
Maronette, with two such legs——Or who stood so well upon them, said
La Sabatiere——But he has no whiskers, cried La Fosseuse——Not a
pile, said La Rebours.

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—Ave Maria!——what can La-Fosseuse mean? said
she, kneeling down upon the cushion.

La Guyol, La Battarelle, La Maronette, La Sabatiere, retired
instantly to their chambers——Whiskers! said all four of them to
themselves, as they bolted their doors on the inside.

The Lady Carnavallette was counting her beads with both hands,
unsuspected, under her farthingal——from St. Antony down to St.
Ursula inclusive, not a saint passed through her fingers without
whiskers; St. Francis, St. Dominick, St. Bennet, St. Basil, St.
Bridget, had all whiskers.

The Lady Baussiere had got into a wilderness of conceits, with
moralizing too intricately upon La Fosseuse’s text——She mounted her
palfrey, her page followed her——the host passed by—the Lady Baussiere
rode on.

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.

——The Lady Baussiere rode on.

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.

The Lady Baussiere rode on.

A decayed kinsman bowed himself to the ground.

——The Lady Baussiere rode on.

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.

——The Lady Baussiere rode on.

Take hold of my whiskers, said the Lady Baussiere—The page took hold
of her palfrey. She dismounted at the end of the terrace.

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.

Ha, ha! he, hee! cried La Guyol and La Sabatiere, looking close at
each other’s prints——Ho, ho! cried La Battarelle and Maronette,
doing the same:—Whist! cried one—ft, ft,—said a second—hush, quoth a
third—poo, poo, replied a fourth—gramercy! cried the Lady
Carnavallette;——’twas she who bewhisker’d St. Bridget.

La Fosseuse 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 La Rebours’ hand—La Rebours
shook her head.

The Lady Baussiere coughed thrice into the inside of her muff—La
Guyol smiled—Fy, said the Lady Baussiere. The queen of Navarre
touched her eye with the tip of her fore-finger—as much as to say, I
understand you all.

’Twas plain to the whole court the word was ruined: La Fosseuse 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 De Croix, finding it high time to
leave Navarre for want of whiskers——the word in course became
indecent, and (after a few efforts) absolutely unfit for use.

The best word, in the best language of the best world, must have
suffered under such combinations.——The curate of d’Estella wrote a
book against them, setting forth the dangers of accessory ideas, and
warning the Navarois against them.

Does not all the world know, said the curate d’Estella at the
conclusion of his work, that Noses ran the same fate some centuries ago
in most parts of Europe, which Whiskers have now done in the kingdom
of Navarre?—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.

The drift of the curate d’Estella’s argument was not understood.—They
ran the scent the wrong way.—The world bridled his ass at the tail.—And
when the extremes of DELICACY, and the beginnings of CONCUPISCENCE,
hold their next provincial chapter together, they may decree that bawdy
also.

C H A P. II

WHEN my father received the letter which brought him the melancholy
account of my brother Bobby’s death, he was busy calculating the
expence of his riding post from Calais to Paris, and so on to
Lyons.

’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 Obadiah’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, Obadiah, said my father (pursuing his
journey)—take the coach-horse, and welcome.——But he wants a shoe, poor
creature! said Obadiah.——Poor creature! said my uncle Toby,
vibrating the note back again, like a string in unison. Then ride the
Scotch horse, quoth my father hastily.—He cannot bear a saddle upon
his back, quoth Obadiah, for the whole world.——The devil’s in that
horse; then take PATRIOT, cried my father, and shut the door.——PATRIOT
is sold, said Obadiah. Here’s for you! cried my father, making a
pause, and looking in my uncle Toby’s face, as if the thing had not
been a matter of fact.—Your worship ordered me to sell him last
April, said Obadiah.—Then go on foot for your pains, cried my
father——I had much rather walk than ride, said Obadiah, shutting the
door.

What plagues, cried my father, going on with his calculation.——But the
waters are out, said Obadiah,—opening the door again.

Till that moment, my father, who had a map of Sanson’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 Nevers, the last stage he
had paid for—purposing to go on from that point with his journey and
calculation, as soon as Obadiah quitted the room: but this second
attack of Obadiah’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
Calais (like many others) as wise as he had set out.

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
Nevers.——By your leave, Mons. Sanson, cried my father, striking the
point of his compasses through Nevers into the table—and nodding to
my uncle Toby to see what was in the letter—twice of one night, is
too much for an English gentleman and his son, Mons. Sanson, to be
turned back from so lousy a town as Nevers—What think’st thou,
Toby? added my father in a sprightly tone.——Unless it be a garrison
town, said my uncle Toby——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 Nevers 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 Toby hummed over the letter.

—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —he’s gone!
said my uncle Toby——Where——Who? cried my father.——My nephew, said my
uncle Toby.——What—without leave—without money—without governor? cried
my father in amazement. No:——he is dead, my dear brother, quoth my
uncle Toby.—Without being ill? cried my father again.—I dare say not,
said my uncle Toby, 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.

When Agrippina was told of her son’s death, Tacitus 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
Nevers, but so much the faster.—What contrarieties! his, indeed, was
matter of calculation!—Agrippina’s must have been quite a different
affair; who else could pretend to reason from history?

How my father went on, in my opinion, deserves a chapter to itself.—

C H A P. III

————And a chapter it shall have, and a devil of a one too—so look to
yourselves.

’Tis either Plato, or Plutarch, or Seneca, or Xenophon, or
Epictetus, or Theophrastus, or Lucian—or some one perhaps of
later date—either Cardan, or Budæus, or Petrarch, or Stella—or
possibly it may be some divine or father of the church, St. Austin,
or St. Cyprian, or Barnard, who affirms that it is an irresistible
and natural passion to weep for the loss of our friends or children—and
Seneca (I’m positive) tells us somewhere, that such griefs evacuate
themselves best by that particular channel—And accordingly we find,
that David wept for his son Absalom—Adrian for his
Antinous—Niobe for her children, and that Apollodorus and Crito
both shed tears for Socrates before his death.

My father managed his affliction otherwise; and indeed differently from
most men either ancient or modern; for he neither wept it away, as the
Hebrews and the Romans—or slept it off, as the Laplanders—or
hanged it, as the English, or drowned it, as the Germans,—nor did
he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or
lillabullero it.——

——He got rid of it, however.

Will your worships give me leave to squeeze in a story between these
two pages?

When Tully was bereft of his dear daughter Tullia, at first he laid
it to his heart,—he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his
own unto it.—O my Tullia! my daughter! my child!—still, still,
still,—’twas O my Tullia!—my Tullia! Methinks I see my Tullia, I
hear my Tullia, I talk with my Tullia.—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.

My father was as proud of his eloquence as MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO 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 ten, and
the pain of the misfortune but as five—my father gained half in half,
and consequently was as well again off, as if it had never befallen
him.

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.

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 Obadiah, 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.

My mother and my uncle Toby expected my father would be the death of
Obadiah—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 Obadiah.——How do I know that? replied my
father.

Triumph swam in my father’s eyes, at the repartee—the Attic salt
brought water into them—and so Obadiah heard no more about it.

Now let us go back to my brother’s death.

Philosophy has a fine saying for every thing.—For Death 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.

“’Tis an inevitable chance—the first statute in Magna Charta—it is an
everlasting act of parliament, my dear brother,—All must die.

“If my son could not have died, it had been matter of wonder,—not that
he is dead.

“Monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with us.

“—To die, 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
Shandy, said my uncle Toby, laying down his pipe at the word
evolutions—Revolutions, I meant, quoth my father,—by heaven! I meant
revolutions, brother Toby—evolutions is nonsense.——’Tis not
nonsense—said my uncle Toby.——But is it not nonsense to break the
thread of such a discourse upon such an occasion? cried my father—do
not—dear Toby, continued he, taking him by the hand, do not—do not, I
beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis.——My uncle Toby put his
pipe into his mouth.

“Where is Troy and Mycenæ, and Thebes and Delos, and
Persepolis and Agrigentum?”—continued my father, taking up his book
of post-roads, which he had laid down.—“What is become, brother Toby,
of Nineveh and Babylon, of Cizicum and Mitylenæ? 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 Toby, must—must come to an end.

“Returning out of Asia, when I sailed from Ægina towards Megara,”
(when can this have been? thought my uncle Toby,) “I began to view
the country round about. Ægina was behind me, Megara was before,
Pyræus on the right hand, Corinth 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.”—

Now my uncle Toby knew not that this last paragraph was an extract of
Servius Sulpicius’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 Turkey
trade, had been three or four different times in the Levant, in one
of which he had stayed a whole year and an half at Zant, my uncle
Toby naturally concluded, that, in some one of these periods, he had
taken a trip across the Archipelago into Asia; and that all this
sailing affair with Ægina behind, and Megara before, and Pyræus
on the right hand, &c. &c. was nothing more than the true course of my
father’s voyage and reflections.—’Twas certainly in his manner, and
many an undertaking critic would have built two stories higher upon
worse foundations.—And pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, 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 Toby.—Simpleton! said my father,—’twas
forty years before Christ was born.

My uncle Toby had but two things for it; either to suppose his
brother to be the wandering Jew, or that his misfortunes had
disordered his brain.—“May the Lord God of heaven and earth protect him
and restore him!” said my uncle Toby, praying silently for my father,
and with tears in his eyes.

—My father placed the tears to a proper account, and went on with his
harangue with great spirit.

“There is not such great odds, brother Toby, betwixt good and evil,
as the world imagines”——(this way of setting off, by the bye, was not
likely to cure my uncle Toby’s suspicions).——“Labour, sorrow, grief,
sickness, want, and woe, are the sauces of life.”—Much good may do
them—said my uncle Toby to himself.——

“My son is dead!—so much the better;—’tis a shame in such a tempest to
have but one anchor.

“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.

“The Thracians wept when a child was born,”—(and we were very near
it, quoth my uncle Toby,)—“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.

“Shew me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and I’ll shew
thee a prisoner who dreads his liberty.”

Is it not better, my dear brother Toby, (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?

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?

There is no terrour, brother Toby, 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 Toby.—Take away its hearses, its mutes, and its
mourning,—its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids—What is
it?—Better in battle! continued my father, smiling, for he had
absolutely forgot my brother Bobby—’tis terrible no way—for consider,
brother Toby,—when we are—death is not;—and when death is—we
are not. My uncle Toby 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 Toby’s ideas along with it.——

For this reason, continued my father, ’tis worthy to recollect, how
little alteration, in great men, the approaches of death have
made.—Vespasian died in a jest upon his close-stool—Galba with a
sentence—Septimus Severus in a dispatch—Tiberius in dissimulation,
and Cæsar Augustus in a compliment.—I hope ’twas a sincere one—quoth
my uncle Toby.

—’Twas to his wife,—said my father.

C H A P. IV

——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.—

’Tis of Cornelius Gallus, the prætor—which, I dare say, brother
Toby, 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 Toby—there could be no hurt in
it.—That’s more than I know—replied my father.

C H A P. V

MY mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which
led to the parlour, as my uncle Toby pronounced the word wife.—’Tis
a shrill penetrating sound of itself, and Obadiah 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.

In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five minutes:
till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as Rapin does those of
the church) to the same period.

C H A P. VI

THOUGH 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 Dutch silk-mill.

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.

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 Dardanelles, 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.—Obadiah 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 Trim got upon
his legs, to speak his sentiments upon the subject.

A curious observer of nature, had he been worth the inventory of all
Job’s stock—though by the bye, your curious observers are seldom
worth a groat—would have given the half of it, to have heard Corporal
Trim and my father, two orators so contrasted by nature and
education, haranguing over the same bier.

My father—a man of deep reading—prompt memory—with Cato, and
Seneca, and Epictetus, at his fingers ends.—

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.

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.

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
Trim! 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?

C H A P. VII

——My young master in London is dead? said Obadiah.—

——A green sattin night-gown of my mother’s, which had been twice
scoured, was the first idea which Obadiah’s exclamation brought into
Susannah’s head.

—Well might Locke write a chapter upon the imperfections of
words.—Then, quoth Susannah, we must all go into mourning.—But note a
second time: the word mourning, notwithstanding Susannah 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.

—O! ’twill be the death of my poor mistress, cried Susannah.—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.—“No,—she will never look
up again,” said Susannah.

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 Obadiah,—he is certainly dead!—So am not I, said the
foolish scullion.

——Here is sad news, Trim, cried Susannah, wiping her eyes as Trim
stepp’d into the kitchen,—master Bobby is dead and buried—the
funeral was an interpolation of Susannah’s—we shall have all to go
into mourning, said Susannah.

I hope not, said Trim.—You hope not! cried Susannah earnestly.—The
mourning ran not in Trim’s head, whatever it did in Susannah’s.—I
hope—said Trim, explaining himself, I hope in God the news is not
true. I heard the letter read with my own ears, answered Obadiah; and
we shall have a terrible piece of work of it in stubbing the
ox-moor.—Oh! he’s dead, said Susannah.—As sure, said the scullion, as
I’m alive.

I lament for him from my heart and my soul, said Trim, fetching a
sigh.—Poor creature!—poor boy!—poor gentleman!

—He was alive last Whitsontide! said the coachman.—Whitsontide!
alas! cried Trim, extending his right arm, and falling instantly into
the same attitude in which he read the sermon,—what is Whitsontide,
Jonathan (for that was the coachman’s name), or Shrovetide, 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!
Susannah burst into a flood of tears.—We are not stocks and
stones.—Jonathan, Obadiah, 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.

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.

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 Barbati, 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.

—I’ve gone a little about—no matter, ’tis for health—let us only carry
it back in our mind to the mortality of Trim’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 Trim had not trusted more to his hat than his head—he made
nothing at all of it.

——“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 Susannah burst into a flood of tears.

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.

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 your purpose——

Ye who wind and turn the passions with this great windlass, and, having
done it, lead the owners of them, whither ye think meet.

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 Trim’s hat.

C H A P. VIII

STAY—I have a small account to settle with the reader before Trim can
go on with his harangue.—It shall be done in two minutes.

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
chamber-maids and button-holes, 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 chamber-maids,
green gowns, and old hats.

Trim 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.

C H A P. IX

——To us, Jonathan, 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 William the Third, whom I had the honour to serve both
in Ireland and Flanders)—I own it, that from Whitsontide to
within three weeks of Christmas,—’tis not long—’tis like nothing;—but
to those, Jonathan, 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 Jonathan! ’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, Susy, added the corporal, turning to Susannah, whose eyes
were swimming in water,—before that time comes round again,—many a
bright eye will be dim.—Susannah placed it to the right side of the
page—she wept—but she court’sied too.—Are we not, continued Trim,
looking still at Susannah—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 Susannah’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.—

—What is the finest face that ever man looked at!—I could hear Trim
talk so for ever, cried Susannah,—what is it! (Susannah laid her
hand upon Trim’s shoulder)—but corruption?——Susannah took it off.

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.

C H A P. X

WHETHER Susannah, 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——

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——

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.

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 Joe Gibbins, 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! Jack’s down!
well,—’tis worth a regiment of horse to him.—No—’tis Dick. Then
Jack’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,
Obadiah, at all in the field.—But he’s very frightful in a house,
quoth Obadiah.——I never mind it myself, said Jonathan, upon a
coach-box.—It must, in my opinion, be most natural in bed, replied
Susannah.—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
Trim—but that is nature.

——Nature is nature, said Jonathan.—And that is the reason, cried
Susannah, 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 Trim.——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 Le Fever. An’ please your honour,
do not sigh so piteously, I would say to him as I laid besides him. I
cannot help it, Trim, my master would say,—’tis so melancholy an
accident—I cannot get it off my heart.—Your honour fears not death
yourself.—I hope, Trim, I fear nothing, he would say, but the doing a
wrong thing.——Well, he would add, whatever betides, I will take care of
Le Fever’s boy.—And with that, like a quieting draught, his honour
would fall asleep.

I like to hear Trim’s stories about the captain, said Susannah.—He
is a kindly-hearted gentleman, said Obadiah, 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
Jonathan, drive such a gentleman for seven pounds a year—than some
for eight.—Thank thee, Jonathan! for thy twenty shillings,—as much,
Jonathan, 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 Tom 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.——Trim 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 Susannah.——With all my heart, answered the
corporal.

Susannah, the cook, Jonathan, Obadiah, and corporal Trim,
formed a circle about the fire; and as soon as the scullion had shut
the kitchen door,—the corporal begun.

C H A P. XI

I AM a Turk 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
Nile, 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 England with it.

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.

C H A P. XII

——BUT to return to my mother.

My uncle Toby’s opinion, Madam, “that there could be no harm in
Cornelius Gallus, the Roman prætor’s lying with his wife;”——or
rather the last word of that opinion,—(for it was all my mother heard
of it) caught hold of her by the weak part of the whole sex:——You shall
not mistake me,—I mean her curiosity,—she instantly concluded herself
the subject of the conversation, and with that prepossession upon her
fancy, you will readily conceive every word my father said, was
accommodated either to herself, or her family concerns.

——Pray, Madam, in what street does the lady live, who would not have
done the same?

From the strange mode of Cornelius’s death, my father had made a
transition to that of Socrates, and was giving my uncle Toby an
abstract of his pleading before his judges;——’twas irresistible:——not
the oration of Socrates,—but my father’s temptation to it.——He had
wrote the Life of Socrates[23] himself the year before he left off
trade, which, I fear, was the means of hastening him out of it;——so
that no one was able to set out with so full a sail, and in so swelling
a tide of heroic loftiness upon the occasion, as my father was. Not a
period in Socrates’s oration, which closed with a shorter word than
transmigration, or annihilation,—or a worse thought in the middle
of it than to be—or not to be,—the entering upon a new and untried
state of things,—or, upon a long, a profound and peaceful sleep,
without dreams, without disturbance?——That we and our children were
born to die,—but neither of us born to be slaves.——No—there I mistake;
that was part of Eleazer’s oration, as recorded by Josephus (de
Bell. Judaic)——Eleazer owns he had it from the philosophers of
India; in all likelihood Alexander the Great, in his irruption into
India, after he had over-run Persia, amongst the many things he
stole,—stole that sentiment also; by which means it was carried, if not
all the way by himself (for we all know he died at Babylon), at least
by some of his maroders, into Greece,—from Greece it got to
Rome,—from Rome to France,—and from France to England:——So
things come round.——

By land carriage, I can conceive no other way.——

By water the sentiment might easily have come down the Ganges into
the Sinus Gangeticus, or Bay of Bengal, and so into the Indian
Sea; and following the course of trade (the way from India by the
Cape of Good Hope being then unknown), might be carried with other
drugs and spices up the Red Sea to Joddah, the port of Mekka, or
else to Tor or Sues, towns at the bottom of the gulf; and from
thence by karrawans to Coptos, but three days journey distant, so
down the Nile directly to Alexandria, where the SENTIMENT would be
landed at the very foot of the great stair-case of the Alexandrian
library,——and from that store-house it would be fetched.——Bless me!
what a trade was driven by the learned in those days!

 [23] 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.

C H A P. XIII

——NOW my father had a way, a little like that of Job’s (in case there
ever was such a man——if not, there’s an end of the matter.——

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 Socrates 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 Socrates’s oration, which my father
was giving my uncle Toby, 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
Socrates.—

——Then, cried my mother, opening the door,——you have one more, Mr.
Shandy, than I know of.

By heaven! I have one less,—said my father, getting up and walking out
of the room.

C H A P. XIV

——THEY are Socrates’s children, said my uncle Toby. He has been
dead a hundred years ago, replied my mother.

My uncle Toby 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.

C H A P. XV

HAD 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.

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 fifths.——’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 Caprichio to Calliope
herself, than draw my bow across my fiddle before that very man; and
yet I’ll stake my Cremona to a Jew’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 Apollo to take his fiddle after me, he can make him no
better.

Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle—hum—dum—drum.

—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.

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.

C H A P. XVI

THE first thing which entered my father’s head, after affairs were a
little settled in the family, and Susanna had got possession of my
mother’s green sattin night-gown,—was to sit down coolly, after the
example of Xenophon, and write a TRISTRA-pædia, 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 INSTITUTE for the government of my childhood and adolescence. I
was my father’s last stake—he had lost my brother Bobby 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 Toby had
done to his doctrine of projectils.—The difference between them was,
that my uncle Toby drew his whole knowledge of projectils from
Nicholas Tartaglia—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.

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.”

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 John de la Casse, the lord archbishop of
Benevento, in compassing his Galatea; in which his Grace of
Benevento 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 Rider’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
primero 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.

I own had John de la Casse, the archbishop of Benevento, for whose
memory (notwithstanding his Galatea,) 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 Galatea might have
jogged on together to the age of Methuselah for me,—the phænomenon
had not been worth a parenthesis.—

But the reverse of this was the truth: John de la Casse 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
Galatea, 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,—viz. that whenever a Christian was
writing a book (not for his private amusement, but) where his intent
and purpose was, bonâ fide, 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 composition, as a state of warfare; 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 RESISTANCE.

My father was hugely pleased with this theory of John de la Casse,
archbishop of Benevento; and (had it not cramped him a little in his
creed) I believe would have given ten of the best acres in the Shandy
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
John de la Casse’s parabolical representation,—as was to be found in
any one poetic fiction or mystic record of antiquity.—Prejudice of
education, he would say, is the devil,—and the multitudes of them
which we suck in with our mother’s milk—are the devil and all.——We
are haunted with them, brother Toby, 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.

This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow progress
my father made in his Tristra-pædia; 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.——

——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.

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.

C H A P. XVII

——’TWAS 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 Slop 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 (August 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 Susannah, 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 **** *** **
*** ****** ?

I was five years old.——Susannah 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 Susannah,—nothing is left—for me, but
to run my country.——

My uncle Toby’s house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so Susannah
fled to it.

C H A P. XVIII

WHEN Susannah told the corporal the misadventure of the sash, with
all the circumstances which attended the murder of me,—(as she called
it,)—the blood forsook his cheeks,—all accessaries in murder being
principals,—Trim’s conscience told him he was as much to blame as
Susannah,—and if the doctrine had been true, my uncle Toby 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 Susannah’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.

C H A P. XIX

’TIS a pity, Trim, said my uncle Toby, 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, Trim.

Your honour shall have them, replied Trim, before tomorrow morning.

It was the joy of Trim’s heart, nor was his fertile head ever at a
loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle Toby 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 Toby’s spouts—hacking and
chiseling up the sides of his leaden gutters,—melting down his pewter
shaving-bason,—and going at last, like Lewis 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 Toby’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.

He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle Toby’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.

——A great MORAL 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.

C H A P. XX

THE 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 Susannah 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,—at least in Susannah’s
hands;——How would your honours have behaved?——He determined at once,
not to take shelter behind Susannah,—but to give it; and with this
resolution upon his mind, he marched upright into the parlour, to lay
the whole manœuvre before my uncle Toby.

My uncle Toby had just then been giving Yorick an account of the
Battle of Steenkirk, and of the strange conduct of count Solmes 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.

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.——

Trim, 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.

C H A P. XXI

——I would be picquetted to death, cried the corporal, as he concluded
Susannah’s story, before I would suffer the woman to come to any
harm,—’twas my fault, an’ please your honour,—not her’s.

Corporal Trim, replied my uncle Toby, 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.

Had count Solmes, Trim, done the same at the battle of Steenkirk,
said Yorick, drolling a little upon the corporal, who had been run
over by a dragoon in the retreat,——he had saved thee;——Saved! cried
Trim, interrupting Yorick, 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 Cutt ’s,—continued the
corporal, clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of
his left, and counting round his hand,——there was Cutt ’s,——Mackay
’s,——Angus ’s,——Graham ’s,——and Leven ’s, all cut to
pieces;——and so had the English 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
Trim.—Trim is right, said my uncle Toby, nodding to
Yorick,——he’s perfectly right. What signified his marching the horse,
continued the corporal, where the ground was so strait, that the
French 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 Solmes 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 Landen.—Poor Trim got his
wound there, quoth my uncle Toby.——’Twas owing, an’ please your
honour, entirely to count Solmes,——had he drubbed them soundly at
Steenkirk, they would not have fought us at Landen.——Possibly
not,——Trim, said my uncle Toby;——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 Trim.——Horse and foot, said my
uncle Toby.——Helter Skelter, said Trim.——Right and left, cried my
uncle Toby.——Blood an’ ounds, shouted the corporal;——the battle
raged,——Yorick drew his chair a little to one side for safety, and
after a moment’s pause, my uncle Toby sinking his voice a
note,—resumed the discourse as follows.

C H A P. XXII

KING William, said my uncle Toby, addressing himself to Yorick,
was so terribly provoked at count Solmes for disobeying his orders,
that he would not suffer him to come into his presence for many months
after.——I fear, answered Yorick, 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 Trim, who has behaved so
diametrically opposite to count Solmes, 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 Toby, 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.——Trim directed a slight,——but a grateful bow towards his
master,——and so the chapter ends.

C H A P. XXIII

——Then, Yorick, replied my uncle Toby, you and I will lead the way
abreast,——and do you, corporal, follow a few paces behind us.——And
Susannah, an’ please your honour, said Trim, 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 Toby’s house to Shandy-hall.

——I wish, said Trim, 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 Yorick.

C H A P. XXIV

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:

This is the true reason, that my dear Jenny 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?

C H A P. XXV

’TIS a point settled,—and I mention it for the comfort of
Confucius,[24] 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.

This being premised, I take the benefit of the act of going backwards
myself.

 [24] Mr Shandy is supposed to mean * * * * * * * * * * *, Esq;
 member for * * * * * *,——and not the Chinese Legislator.

C H A P. XXVI

FIFTY thousand pannier loads of devils—(not of the Archbishop of
Benevento’s—I mean of Rabelais’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 Susannah had but just time to make her
escape down the back stairs, as my mother came up the fore.

Now, though I was old enough to have told the story myself,—and young
enough, I hope, to have done it without malignity; yet Susannah, 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
Jonathan, and Jonathan to Obadiah; so that by the time my father
had rung the bell half a dozen times, to know what was the matter
above,—was Obadiah 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.

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 Tristra-pædia, which to me is the most
original and entertaining one in the whole book;—and that is the
chapter upon sash-windows, with a bitter Philippick at the end of
it, upon the forgetfulness of chamber-maids.—I have but two reasons for
thinking otherwise.

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.

——That, in order to render the Tristra-pædia complete,—I wrote the
chapter myself.

C H A P. XXVII

MY 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 Obadiah 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.

——If it be but right done,—said my father, turning to the Section—de
sede vel subjecto circumcisionis,—for he had brought up Spenser de
Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus—and Maimonides, in order to confront
and examine us altogether.——

——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. Slop.

My mother went down, and my father went on, reading the section as
follows,

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  * *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * * 
*  *  *  *  *—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 Jews had it from the Egyptians, or
the Egyptians from the Jews,—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 EGYPTIANS,—the SYRIANS,—the
PHOENICIANS,—the ARABIANS,—the CAPPADOCIANS,——if the COLCHI, and
TROGLODYTES did it——if SOLON and PYTHAGORAS submitted,—what is
TRISTRAM?——Who am I, that I should fret or fume one moment about the
matter?

C H A P. XXVIII

DEAR Yorick, said my father smiling (for Yorick had broke his rank
with my uncle Toby in coming through the narrow entry, and so had
stept first into the parlour)—this Tristram of ours, I find, comes
very hardly by all his religious rites.—Never was the son of Jew,
Christian, Turk, or Infidel initiated into them in so oblique and
slovenly a manner.—But he is no worse, I trust, said Yorick.—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
Yorick.—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 bo-peep,—or something has
been wrong above, or below with us.

’Tis possible, answered Yorick.—But is the child, cried my uncle
Toby, the worse?—The Troglodytes say not, replied my father. And
your theologists, Yorick, tell us—Theologically? said Yorick,—or
speaking after the manner of apothecaries?[25]—statesmen?[26]—or
washer-women?[27]

——I’m not sure, replied my father,—but they tell us, brother Toby,
he’s the better for it.——Provided, said Yorick, you travel him into
Egypt.—Of that, answered my father, he will have the advantage, when
he sees the Pyramids.——

Now every word of this, quoth my uncle Toby, is Arabic to me.——I
wish, said Yorick, ’twas so, to half the world.

—ILUS,[28] continued my father, circumcised his whole army one
morning.—Not without a court martial? cried my uncle Toby.——Though
the learned, continued he, taking no notice of my uncle Toby’s
remark, but turning to Yorick,—are greatly divided still who Ilus
was;—some say Saturn;—some the Supreme Being;—others, no more than a
brigadier general under Pharaoh-neco.——Let him be who he will, said
my uncle Toby, I know not by what article of war he could justify it.

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 Yorick, 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. Yorick, quoth
my uncle Toby,—do tell me what a polemic divine is?——The best
description, captain Shandy, I have ever read, is of a couple of ’em,
replied Yorick, in the account of the battle fought single hands
betwixt Gymnast and captain Tripet; which I have in my pocket.——I
beg I may hear it, quoth my uncle Toby earnestly.—You shall, said
Yorick.—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.——Trim came in, erect and happy as an emperor;
and having shut the door, Yorick took a book from his right-hand
coat-pocket, and read, or pretended to read, as follows.

 [25] Χαλεπῆς νόσου, καὶ δυσιάτου ἀπαλλαγὴν, ἣν ἄνθρακα καλοῦσιν.—PHILO

 [26] Τὰ τεμνόμενα τῶν ἐθνῶν τολυγονώτατα, καὶ πολυανθρωπότατα εἶναι.

 [27] Καθαριότητος εἵνεκεν.—BOCHART.

 [28] Ὁ Ἶλος, τὰ αἰδοῖα περιτέμνεται, ταὐτὸ ποιῆσαι καὶ τοὺς ἅμ’ αυτῷ
 συμμάχους καταναγκάσας.—SANCHUNIATHO.

C H A P. XXIX

——“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 Gymnast 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 Tripet, I will not do that at this
time,—and not without cause. Well, said Gymnast, 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 touching any thing, he brought himself betwixt the horse’s
two ears, and then giving himself a jerking swing, he seated himself
upon the crupper—”

(This can’t be fighting, said my uncle Toby.——The corporal shook his
head at it.——Have patience, said Yorick.)

“Then (Tripet) pass’d his right leg over his saddle, and placed
himself en croup.—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 Trim, losing all patience,—one home
thrust of a bayonet is worth it all.——I think so too, replied
Yorick.——

I am of a contrary opinion, quoth my father.

C H A P. XXX

——No,—I think I have advanced nothing, replied my father, making answer
to a question which Yorick had taken the liberty to put to him,—I
have advanced nothing in the Tristra-pædia, but what is as clear as
any one proposition in Euclid.—Reach me, Trim, 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, Yorick, and to my brother Toby, 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 Toby and Yorick 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. Trim, quoth my father, has paid the full price for
staying out the entertainment.——He did not seem to relish the play,
replied Yorick.——’Twas a Tom-fool-battle, an’ please your reverence,
of captain Tripet ’s and that other officer, making so many
summersets, as they advanced;——the French come on capering now and
then in that way,—but not quite so much.

My uncle Toby 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,——Yorick drew his chair
closer to the table,—Trim snuff’d the candle,—my father stirr’d up
the fire,—took up the book,—cough’d twice, and begun.

C H A P. XXXI

THE 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 Yorick.

The original of society, continued my father, I’m satisfied is, what
Politian tells us, i.e. merely conjugal; and nothing more than the
getting together of one man and one woman;—to which, (according to
Hesiod) 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
Yorick, 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 Toby, 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 Toby’s reason.—For when the
ground was tilled, said my uncle Toby, and made worth inclosing, then
they began to secure it by walls and ditches, which was the origin of
fortification.——True, true, dear Toby, cried my father, striking out
the bull, and putting the ox in his place.

My father gave Trim a nod, to snuff the candle, and resumed his
discourse.

——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—

1st, by marriage.

2d, by adoption.

3d, by legitimation.

And 4th, by procreation; all which I consider in their order.

I lay a slight stress upon one of them, replied Yorick——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 Yorick,
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,—she
is not the principal agent, Yorick.—In what, quoth my uncle Toby?
stopping his pipe.—Though by all means, added my father (not attending
to my uncle Toby), “The son ought to pay her respect,” as you may
read, Yorick, at large in the first book of the Institutes of
Justinian, at the eleventh title and the tenth section.—I can read it
as well, replied Yorick, in the Catechism.

C H A P. XXXII

TRIM can repeat every word of it by heart, quoth my uncle Toby.—Pugh!
said my father, not caring to be interrupted with Trim’s saying his
Catechism. He can, upon my honour, replied my uncle Toby.—Ask him,
Mr. Yorick, any question you please.——

—The fifth Commandment, Trim,—said Yorick, 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 Toby, raising his
voice, and giving it rapidly like the word of command:——The
fifth———cried my uncle Toby.—I must begin with the first, an’ please
your honour, said the corporal.——

—Yorick 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.—

“Join your right-hand to your firelock,” cried the corporal, giving
the word of command, and performing the motion.—

“Poise your firelock,” cried the corporal, doing the duty still both
of adjutant and private man.

“Rest your firelock;”—one motion, an’ please your reverence, you see
leads into another.—If his honour will begin but with the first—

THE FIRST—cried my uncle Toby, setting his hand upon his side—* * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.

THE SECOND—cried my uncle Toby, waving his tobacco-pipe, as he would
have done his sword at the head of a regiment.—The corporal went
through his manual with exactness; and having honoured his father
and mother, made a low bow, and fell back to the side of the room.

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.

—Here is the scaffold work of INSTRUCTION, its true point of folly,
without the BUILDING behind it.

—Here is the glass for pedagogues, preceptors, tutors, governors,
gerund-grinders, and bear-leaders to view themselves in, in their true
dimensions.—

Oh! there is a husk and shell, Yorick, which grows up with learning,
which their unskilfulness knows not how to fling away!

—SCIENCES MAY BE LEARNED BY ROTE BUT WISDOM NOT.

Yorick thought my father inspired.—I will enter into obligations this
moment, said my father, to lay out all my aunt Dinah’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, Trim, quoth my father, turning round to
him,—What dost thou mean, by “honouring thy father and mother?”

Allowing them, an’ please your honour, three halfpence a day out of my
pay, when they grow old.—And didst thou do that, Trim? said
Yorick.—He did indeed, replied my uncle Toby.—Then, Trim, said
Yorick, springing out of his chair, and taking the corporal by the
hand, thou art the best commentator upon that part of the Decalogue;
and I honour thee more for it, corporal Trim, than if thou hadst had
a hand in the Talmud itself.

C H A P. XXXIIIV

O BLESSED 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.

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.

My father read as follows:

“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 Yorick.
Sufficiently, replied my father.

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.——

I have demonstrated the truth of that point, quoth my father, nodding
to Yorick, most sufficiently in the preceding chapter.

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
radical heat and the radical moisture,—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, pro or con, directly or indirectly, upon the
contention betwixt these two powers in any part of the animal œconomy——

“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 MOONITES done?”

C H A P. XXXIV

WITH two strokes, the one at Hippocrates, the other at Lord
Verulam, did my father achieve it.

The stroke at the prince of physicians, with which he began, was no
more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the Ars
longa,—and Vita brevis.——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?

——O my lord Verulam! cried my father, turning from Hippocrates, 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 Verulam? What shall I say to thy internal
spirit,—thy opium, thy salt-petre,——thy greasy unctions,—thy daily
purges,—thy nightly clysters, and succedaneums?

——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.

C H A P. XXXV

“THE two great causes, which conspire with each other to shorten life,
says lord Verulam, are first——

“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.”

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.——

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.

What my father had to say to my lord of Verulam’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 Tristra-pædia is published.——

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.——

C H A P. XXXVI

THE 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 Van Helmont, the famous chymist, has
proved) by all along mistaking the radical moisture for the tallow and
fat of animal bodies.

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
Aristotle, “Quod omne animal post coitum est triste.”

Now it is certain, that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture,
but whether vice versa, 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.——

C H A P. XXXVII

THE description of the siege of Jericho itself, could not have
engaged the attention of my uncle Toby 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 Toby 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,—aside.— * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *. It was at the siege of Limerick, an’ please
your honour, replied the corporal, making a bow.

The poor fellow and I, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself to my
father, were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, at the time the
siege of Limerick was raised, upon the very account you mention.——Now
what can have got into that precious noddle of thine, my dear brother
Toby? cried my father, mentally.——By Heaven! continued he, communing
still with himself, it would puzzle an Œdipus to bring it in point.——

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,
Trim, added my uncle Toby, 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 Toby, 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.

All this was as much Arabick to my father, as the rites of the
Colchi and Troglodites had been before to my uncle Toby; my
father could not determine whether he was to frown or to smile.

My uncle Toby, turning to Yorick, resumed the case at Limerick,
more intelligibly than he had begun it,—and so settled the point for my
father at once.

C H A P. XXXVIII

IT was undoubtedly, said my uncle Toby, 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.——

——It was Heaven’s mercy to us, continued my uncle Toby, 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 Toby,
you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother
Shandy, twenty toises.—If there was no firing, said Yorick.

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—————————————Yorick, 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, Trim, said Yorick, without
staying for my father’s leave,—tell us honestly—what is thy opinion
concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture?

With humble submission to his honour’s better judgment, quoth the
corporal, making a bow to my uncle Toby—Speak thy opinion freely,
corporal, said my uncle Toby.—The poor fellow is my servant,—not my
slave,—added my uncle Toby, turning to my father.——

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.

C H A P. XXXIX

JUST as the corporal was humming, to begin—in waddled Dr. Slop.—’Tis
not two-pence matter—the corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let
who will come in.——

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?

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. Slop had laid down, to treat the accident by, no way
allowed of such a mode of enquiry.—He sat down.

Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle Toby, in a manner which could not go
unanswered,—in what condition is the boy?—’Twill end in a phimosis,
replied Dr. Slop.

I am no wiser than I was, quoth my uncle Toby—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. Slop,
and then delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical
moisture, in the following words.

C H A P. XL

THE city of Limerick, the siege of which was begun under his majesty
king William 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 Toby, with the
Shannon, and is, by its situation, one of the strongest fortified
places in Ireland.——

I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr. Slop, of beginning a medical
lecture.—’Tis all true, answered Trim.—Then I wish the faculty would
follow the cut of it, said Yorick.—’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.——

And what conclusion dost thou draw, corporal Trim, cried my father,
from all these premises?

I infer, an’ please your worship, replied Trim, 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.

I am at a loss, Captain Shandy, quoth Doctor Slop, to determine in
which branch of learning your servant shines most, whether in
physiology or divinity.—Slop had not forgot Trim’s comment upon the
sermon.—

It is but an hour ago, replied Yorick, since the corporal was
examined in the latter, and passed muster with great honour.——

The radical heat and moisture, quoth Doctor Slop, 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 consubstantials, impriments, and
occludents.——Now this poor fellow, continued Dr. Slop, 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 Yorick.——

C H A P. XLI

DOCTOR Slop 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 Tristra-pædia.——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!—

C H A P. XLII

——FIVE years with a bib under his chin;

Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to Malachi;

A year and a half in learning to write his own name;

Seven long years and more τυπιω-ing it, at Greek and Latin;

Four years at his probations and his negations—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 Julius Scaliger within an ace of never getting his tools
sharpened at all?——Forty-four years old was he before he could manage
his Greek;—and Peter Damianus, lord bishop of Ostia, as all the
world knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man’s
estate.—And Baldus 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
Eudamidas, the son of Archidamas, heard Xenocrates at
seventy-five disputing about wisdom, that he asked gravely,—If the
old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom,—what time
will he have to make use of it?

Yorick 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.

I am convinced, Yorick, 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, Yorick, has not a parent to point
it out.

——The whole entirely depends, added my father, in a low voice, upon the
auxiliary verbs, Mr. Yorick.

Had Yorick trod upon Virgil ’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 Raymond Lullius, and the
elder Pelegrini, 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, pro
and con, 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 Yorick, interrupting my father, to
be made to comprehend this matter. You shall, said my father.

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.

Now the use of the Auxiliaries 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.

You excite my curiosity greatly, said Yorick.

For my own part, quoth my uncle Toby, I have given it up.——The
Danes, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, who were on the
left at the siege of Limerick, were all auxiliaries.——And very good
ones, said my uncle Toby.—But the auxiliaries, Trim, my brother is
talking about,—I conceive to be different things.——

——You do? said my father, rising up.

C H A P. XLIII

MY father took a single turn across the room, then sat down, and
finished the chapter.

The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, continued my father, are,
am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; shall; should; will;
would; can; could; owe; ought; used; or is wont.—And these varied
with tenses, present, past, future, and conjugated with the verb
see,—or with these questions added to them;—Is it? Was it? Will it
be? Would it be? May it be? Might it be? And these again put
negatively, Is it not? Was it not? Ought it not?—Or
affirmatively,—It is; It was; It ought to be. Or
chronologically,—Has it been always? Lately? How long ago?—Or
hypothetically,—If it was? If it was not? What would follow?—If the
French should beat the English? If the Sun go out of the
Zodiac?

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 Trim, who stood at
the back of his chair:—No, an’ please your honour, replied the
corporal.——But thou couldst discourse about one, Trim, said my
father, in case of need?——How is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle
Toby, if the corporal never saw one?——’Tis the fact I want, replied
my father,—and the possibility of it is as follows.

A WHITE BEAR! 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?

Would I had seen a white bear! (for how can I imagine it?)

If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should never see
a white bear, what then?

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?

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?

—Is the white bear worth seeing?—

—Is there no sin in it?—

Is it better than a BLACK ONE?

C H A P. XLIV

——WE’LL not stop two moments, my dear Sir,—only, as we have got through
these five volumes[29], (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.——

——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!

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!

——Prithee, shepherd! who keeps all those Jack Asses? * * *

——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.

 [29] In the first edition, the sixth volume began with this chapter.

C H A P. XLV

WHEN 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 Trim’s hand, with a nod to lay it upon
the ’scrutoire, where he found it.——Tristram, said he, shall be made
to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the
same way;——every word, Yorick, 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 Shandy, cried my uncle Toby, to burst it into a
thousand splinters.——

I presume, said Yorick, 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 Vincent Quirino, amongst the many other astonishing feats of
his childhood, of which the Cardinal Bembo has given the world so
exact a story,—should be able to paste up in the public schools at
Rome, 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
Alphonsus Tostatus, 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 Piereskius?—That’s the very man, cried my
uncle Toby, I once told you of, brother Shandy, who walked a matter
of five hundred miles, reckoning from Paris to Shevling, and from
Shevling back again, merely to see Stevinus’s flying chariot.——He
was a very great man! added my uncle Toby (meaning Stevinus)—He was
so, brother Toby, said my father (meaning Piereskius)——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 Toby:—I should think not,
said Yorick:—But what are these, continued my father—(breaking out in
a kind of enthusiasm)—what are these, to those prodigies of childhood
in Grotius, Scioppius, Heinsius, Politian, Pascal, Joseph Scaliger,
Ferdinand de Cordouè, and others—some of which left off their
substantial forms at nine years old, or sooner, and went on reasoning
without them;—others went through their classics at seven;—wrote
tragedies at eight;—Ferdinand de Cordouè was so wise at nine,—’twas
thought the Devil was in him;—and at Venice gave such proofs of his
knowledge and goodness, that the monks imagined he was Antichrist, 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 Servius and Martianus Capella at
twelve,—and at thirteen received their degrees in philosophy, laws, and
divinity:——but you forget the great Lipsius, quoth Yorick, who
composed a work[30] the day he was born:——They should have wiped it up,
said my uncle Toby, and said no more about it.

 [30] Nous aurions quelque interêt, says Baillet, de montrer qu’il
 n’a rien de ridicule s’il étoit veritable, au moins dans le sens
 énigmatique que Nicius Erythræus a tâ hé de lui donner. Cet auteur
 dit que pour comprendre comme Lipse, 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 neuf ans; et
 il nous veut persuader que ce fut en cet âge, que Lipse fit un
 poëme.——Le tour est ingénieux, &c. &c.

C H A P. XLVI

WHEN the cataplasm was ready, a scruple of decorum had unseasonably
rose up in Susannah’s conscience, about holding the candle, whilst
Slop tied it on; Slop had not treated Susannah’s distemper with
anodynes,—and so a quarrel had ensued betwixt them.

——Oh! oh!——said Slop, casting a glance of undue freedom in
Susannah’s face, as she declined the office;——then, I think I know
you, madam——You know me, Sir! cried Susannah fastidiously, and with a
toss of her head, levelled evidently, not at his profession, but at the
doctor himself,——you know me! cried Susannah again.——Doctor Slop
clapped his finger and his thumb instantly upon his
nostrils;——Susannah’s spleen was ready to burst at it;——’Tis false,
said Susannah.—Come, come, Mrs. Modesty, said Slop, 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 Susannah:—’Tis better, said Slop, with a nod,
than no shift at all, young woman;——I defy you, Sir, cried Susannah,
pulling her shift sleeve below her elbow.

It was almost impossible for two persons to assist each other in a
surgical case with a more splenetic cordiality.

Slop snatched up the cataplasm——Susannah snatched up the candle;——A
little this way, said Slop; Susannah looking one way, and rowing
another, instantly set fire to Slop’s wig, which being somewhat bushy
and unctuous withal, was burnt out before it was well kindled.——You
impudent whore! cried Slop,—(for what is passion, but a wild
beast?)—you impudent whore, cried Slop, getting upright, with the
cataplasm in his hand;——I never was the destruction of any body’s nose,
said Susannah,—which is more than you can say:——Is it? cried Slop,
throwing the cataplasm in her face;——Yes, it is, cried Susannah,
returning the compliment with what was left in the pan.

C H A P. XLVII

DOCTOR Slop and Susannah 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.

C H A P. XLVIII

YOU see ’tis high time, said my father, addressing himself equally to
my uncle Toby and Yorick, to take this young creature out of these
women’s hands, and put him into those of a private governor. Marcus
Antoninus provided fourteen governors all at once to superintend his
son Commodus’s education,—and in six weeks he cashiered five of
them;—I know very well, continued my father, that Commodus’s mother
was in love with a gladiator at the time of her conception, which
accounts for a great many of Commodus’s cruelties when he became
emperor;—but still I am of opinion, that those five whom Antoninus
dismissed, did Commodus’s temper, in that short time, more hurt than
the other nine were able to rectify all their lives long.

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, Yorick, if possible, polished at all
points, fit for my child to look into.——This is very good sense, quoth
my uncle Toby to himself.

——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
well within; and I am not at all surprised that Gregory of
Nazianzum, upon observing the hasty and untoward gestures of
Julian, should foretel he would one day become an apostate;——or that
St. Ambrose should turn his Amanuensis out of doors, because of an
indecent motion of his head, which went backwards and forwards like a
flail;——or that Democritus should conceive Protagoras 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.

It is for these reasons, continued my father, that the governor I make
choice of shall neither[31] 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.——

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.——

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 Erasmus) 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 Toby to himself.——

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 Yorick:——And why not,
cried my uncle Toby, free, and generous, and bountiful, and
brave?——He shall, my dear Toby, replied my father, getting up and
shaking him by his hand.—Then, brother Shandy, answered my uncle
Toby, 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 Le
Fever’s son to you;——a tear of joy of the first water sparkled in my
uncle Toby’s eye, and another, the fellow to it, in the corporal’s,
as the proposition was made;——you will see why when you read Le
Fever’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.

 [31] Vid. Pellegrina.

C H A P. XLIX

THE STORY OF LE FEVER

IT was some time in the summer of that year in which Dendermond 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
Toby and Trim 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 Europe——when my uncle Toby was one evening
getting his supper, with Trim 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 Toby
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 Toby could have taken Dendermond itself,
with less trouble than he was able to gain this point over him; for
many a time when my uncle Toby 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.

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 think, says he, taking his hand
from his forehead, it would comfort me.——

——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.

Thou art a good-natured soul, I will answer for thee, cried my uncle
Toby; 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.

Though I am persuaded, said my uncle Toby, as the landlord shut the
door, he is a very compassionate fellow—Trim,—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 Toby,—do Trim,—and ask if he knows his name.

——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 Toby.—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.

My uncle Toby laid down his knife and fork, and thrust his plate from
before him, as the landlord gave him the account; and Trim, without
being ordered, took away, without saying one word, and in a few minutes
after brought him his pipe and tobacco.

——Stay in the room a little, said my uncle Toby.

Trim!——said my uncle Toby, after he lighted his pipe, and smoak’d
about a dozen whiffs.——Trim came in front of his master, and made his
bow;—my uncle Toby smoak’d on, and said no more.——Corporal! said my
uncle Toby—the corporal made his bow.——My uncle Toby proceeded no
farther, but finished his pipe.

Trim! said my uncle Toby, 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. Nicholas;—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 Toby; but I am not
at rest in my mind, Trim, since the account the landlord has given
me.——I wish I had not known so much of this affair,—added my uncle
Toby,—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,
Trim, said my uncle Toby, 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.

My uncle Toby 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 Le Fever and his boy the whole time he smoaked it.

C H A P.   L

THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED

IT was not till my uncle Toby had knocked the ashes out of his third
pipe, that corporal Trim returned from the inn, and gave him the
following account.

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 Toby——He is, said
the corporal——And in what regiment? said my uncle Toby——I’ll tell
your honour, replied the corporal, every thing straight forwards, as I
learnt it.—Then, Trim, I’ll fill another pipe, said my uncle Toby,
and not interrupt thee till thou hast done; so sit down at thy ease,
Trim, 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—Your honour is good:—And having done that, he sat down, as he was
ordered,—and begun the story to my uncle Toby over again in pretty
near the same words.

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, Trim, said my uncle Toby—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.

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
Toby,—he has been bred up from an infant in the army, and the name of
a soldier, Trim, sounded in his ears like the name of a friend;—I
wish I had him here.

——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, Trim,
said my uncle Toby, blowing his nose,—but that thou art a
good-natured fellow.

When I gave him the toast, continued the corporal, I thought it was
proper to tell him I was captain Shandy’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 Toby),——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. Yorick’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 Toby.

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.——

I thought, said the curate, that you gentlemen of the army, Mr. Trim,
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,
Trim, said my uncle Toby.——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 how and when 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, Trim,
said my uncle Toby,—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,
Trim, accordingly.——I hope we shall, said Trim.——It is in the
Scripture, said my uncle Toby; and I will shew it thee to-morrow:—In
the mean time we may depend upon it, Trim, for our comfort, said my
uncle Toby, 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, Trim, said my uncle
Toby, with thy story.

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.

He did not offer to speak to me, till I had walked up close to his bed-
side:—If you are captain Shandy’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 Levens’s—said the lieutenant.—I
told him your honour was—Then, said he, I served three campaigns with
him in Flanders, 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 Le Fever, a lieutenant in
Angus’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 Breda, 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, Billy, 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.

I wish, said my uncle Toby, with a deep sigh,—I wish, Trim, I was
asleep.

Your honour, replied the corporal, is too much concerned;—shall I pour
your honour out a glass of sack to your pipe?——Do, Trim, said my
uncle Toby.

I remember, said my uncle Toby, 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 Le Fever 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 Ireland, and were on their route to join the regiment in
Flanders.——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
Toby.

C H A P.   LI

THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED

IT was to my uncle Toby’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 Toby was warmly engaged at
that time in carrying on the siege of Dendermond, 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 Dendermond,
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 Dendermond into a
blockade,—he left Dendermond to itself—to be relieved or not by the
French king, as the French king thought good; and only considered
how he himself should relieve the poor lieutenant and his son.

——That kind BEING, who is a friend to the friendless, shall recompence
thee for this.

Thou hast left this matter short, said my uncle Toby to the corporal,
as he was putting him to bed,——and I will tell thee in what,
Trim.——In the first place, when thou madest an offer of my services
to Le Fever,——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, Trim, he had been
as welcome to it as myself.——Your honour knows, said the corporal, I
had no orders;——True, quoth my uncle Toby,—thou didst very right,
Trim, as a soldier,—but certainly very wrong as a man.

In the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse,
continued my uncle Toby,——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, Trim, and if we had him with
us,—we could tend and look to him:——Thou art an excellent nurse
thyself, Trim,—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.——

——In a fortnight or three weeks, added my uncle Toby, smiling,——he
might march.——He will never march; an’ please your honour, in this
world, said the corporal:——He will march; said my uncle Toby, 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 Toby, 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 Toby;——He’ll drop at last, said the
corporal, and what will become of his boy?——He shall not drop, said my
uncle Toby, firmly.——A-well-o’day,—do what we can for him, said
Trim, maintaining his point,—the poor soul will die:——He shall not
die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.

—The ACCUSING SPIRIT, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath,
blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL, as he wrote it down,
dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.

C H A P. LII

——MY uncle Toby 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.

C H A P. LIII

THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED

THE sun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village
but Le Fever’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 Toby, 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.——

——You shall go home directly, Le Fever, said my uncle Toby, 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, Le Fever.

There was a frankness in my uncle Toby,—not the effect 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 Toby 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 Le Fever, 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 Toby’s face,—then cast a look upon
his boy,——and that ligament, fine as it was,—was never broken.——

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.

C H A P. LIV

I AM so impatient to return to my own story, that what remains of young
Le Fever’s, that is, from this turn of his fortune, to the time my
uncle Toby 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.—

That my uncle Toby, with young Le Fever in his hand, attended the
poor lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his grave.

That the governor of Dendermond paid his obsequies all military
honours,—and that Yorick, 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 appears,—for it was
Yorick’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, This sermon upon the Jewish dispensation—I don’t
like it at all;—Though I own there is a world of WATER-LANDISH
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?

——N.B. The excellency of this text is, that it will suit any
sermon,—and of this sermon,——that it will suit any text.——

——For this sermon I shall be hanged,—for I have stolen the greatest
part of it. Doctor Paidagunes found me out. => Set a thief to catch a
thief.——

On the back of half a dozen I find written, So, so, and no more——and
upon a couple Moderato; by which, as far as one may gather from
Altieri’s Italian dictionary,—but mostly from the authority of a
piece of green whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of
Yorick’s whip-lash, with which he has left us the two sermons marked
Moderato, and the half dozen of So, so, tied fast together in one
bundle by themselves,—one may safely suppose he meant pretty near the
same thing.

There is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which is
this, that the moderato’s are five times better than the so,
so’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 Yorick’s dramatic sermons are offered to the world,
though I shall admit but one out of the whole number of the so, so’s,
I shall, nevertheless, adventure to print the two moderato’s without
any sort of scruple.

What Yorick could mean by the words lentamente,—tenutè,—grave,—and
sometimes adagio,—as applied to theological compositions, and with
which he has characterised some of these sermons, I dare not venture to
guess.——I am more puzzled still upon finding a l’octava alta! upon
one;——Con strepito upon the back of another;——Scicilliana upon a
third;——Alla capella upon a fourth;——Con l’arco upon this;——Senza
l’arco 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.

Amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably
led me into this digression——The funeral sermon upon poor Le Fever,
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——

Bravo!

——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
Italian hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the place, whether
your thumb is there or not,—so that from the manner of it, it stands
half excused; and being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted
almost to nothing,—’tis more like a ritratto of the shadow of vanity,
than of VANITY 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.

With all these extenuations, I am aware, that in publishing this, I do
no service to Yorick’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.

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?

C H A P. lV

When my uncle Toby had turned every thing into money, and settled all
accounts betwixt the agent of the regiment and Le Fever, and betwixt
Le Fever and all mankind,——there remained nothing more in my uncle
Toby’s hands, than an old regimental coat and a sword; so that my
uncle Toby found little or no opposition from the world in taking
administration. The coat my uncle Toby gave the corporal;——Wear it,
Trim, said my uncle Toby, as long as it will hold together, for the
sake of the poor lieutenant——And this,——said my uncle Toby, taking up
the sword in his hand, and drawing it out of the scabbard as he
spoke——and this, Le Fever, I’ll save for thee,—’tis all the fortune,
continued my uncle Toby, hanging it up upon a crook, and pointing to
it,—’tis all the fortune, my dear Le Fever, 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.

As soon as my uncle Toby had laid a foundation, and taught him to
inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school,
where, excepting Whitsontide and Christmas, 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 Hungary against the Turks, kindling a spark of fire in
his bosom, he left his Greek and Latin without leave, and throwing
himself upon his knees before my uncle Toby, begged his father’s
sword, and my uncle Toby’s leave along with it, to go and try his
fortune under Eugene.—Twice did my uncle Toby forget his wound and
cry out, Le Fever! 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.——

My uncle Toby 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 Le Fever a single
fortnight to equip him, and contract for his passage to Leghorn,—he
put the sword into his hand.——If thou art brave, Le Fever, said my
uncle Toby, this will not fail thee,——but Fortune, said he (musing a
little),——Fortune may——And if she does,—added my uncle Toby,
embracing him, come back again to me, Le Fever, and we will shape
thee another course.

The greatest injury could not have oppressed the heart of Le Fever
more than my uncle Toby’s paternal kindness;——he parted from my uncle
Toby, as the best of sons from the best of fathers——both dropped
tears——and as my uncle Toby 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.

C H A P. LVI

LE FEVER got up to the Imperial army just time enough to try what metal
his sword was made of, at the defeat of the Turks before Belgrade;
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
Marseilles, from whence he wrote my uncle Toby 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.

As this letter came to hand about six weeks before Susannah’s
accident, Le Fever was hourly expected; and was uppermost in my uncle
Toby’s mind all the time my father was giving him and Yorick a
description of what kind of a person he would chuse for a preceptor to
me: but as my uncle Toby thought my father at first somewhat fanciful
in the accomplishments he required, he forbore mentioning Le Fever’s
name,——till the character, by Yorick’s inter-position, ending
unexpectedly, in one, who should be gentle-tempered, and generous, and
good, it impressed the image of Le Fever, and his interest, upon my
uncle Toby 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 Shandy, said my uncle Toby, I may recommend poor Le
Fever’s son to you—I beseech you do, added Yorick——He has a good
heart, said my uncle Toby——And a brave one too, an’ please your
honour, said the corporal.

——The best hearts, Trim, are ever the bravest, replied my uncle
Toby.——And the greatest cowards, an’ please your honour, in our
regiment, were the greatest rascals in it.—There was serjeant Kumber,
and ensign——

——We’ll talk of them, said my father, another time.

C H A P. LVII

WHAT 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!

Doctor Slop, 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
Susannah’s accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a
week’s time, or less, it was in every body’s mouth, That poor Master
Shandy * * * * * * * * * * * * entirely.—And FAME, 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.”

Could the world have been sued like a BODY-CORPORATE,—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.——

——Was ever poor devil of a country gentleman so hampered? said my
father.

I would shew him publickly, said my uncle Toby, at the market cross.

——’Twill have no effect, said my father.

C H A P. LVIII

——I’ll put him, however, into breeches, said my father,—let the world
say what it will.

C H A P. LIX

THERE 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 GODDESS OF
COOLNESS herself (I do not take upon me to prove her existence) could
neither have wished it, or done it better.

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 pro’d and conn’d,
and judicially talked over betwixt him and my mother about a month
before, in two several beds of justice, 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.

C H A P. LX

THE ancient Goths of Germany, who (the learned Cluverius is
positive) were first seated in the country between the Vistula and
the Oder, and who afterwards incorporated the Herculi, the
Bugians, and some other Vandallick 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.

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
Sunday night in the month, and the Saturday night which immediately
preceded it, to argue it over, in bed with my mother: By which
contrivance, if you consider, Sir, with yourself, * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* *

These my father, humorously enough, called his beds of justice;——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.

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 Goths and
Vandals 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.

My way is this:——

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 full,—and t’other fasting;——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 Gothick—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.——

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.——

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 Shandean book,
which will do all your hearts good——

——And all your heads too,—provided you understand it.

C H A P. LXI

WE 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. Shandy, of putting this boy
into breeches.——

We should so,—said my mother.——We defer it, my dear, quoth my father,
shamefully.——

I think we do, Mr. Shandy,—said my mother.

——Not but the child looks extremely well, said my father, in his vests
and tunicks.——

——He does look very well in them,—replied my mother.——

——And for that reason it would be almost a sin, added my father, to
take him out of ’em.——

——It would so,—said my mother:——But indeed he is growing a very tall
lad,—rejoined my father.

——He is very tall for his age, indeed,—said my mother.——

——I can not (making two syllables of it) imagine, quoth my father, who
the deuce he takes after.——

I cannot conceive, for my life, said my mother.——

Humph!——said my father.

(The dialogue ceased for a moment.)

——(I am very short myself,—continued my father gravely.

You are very short, Mr Shandy,—said my mother.

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.

——When he gets these breeches made, cried my father in a higher tone,
he’ll look like a beast in ’em.

He will be very awkward in them at first, replied my mother.

——And ’twill be lucky, if that’s the worst on’t, added my father.

It will be very lucky, answered my mother.

I suppose, replied my father,—making some pause first,—he’ll be exactly
like other people’s children.——

Exactly, said my mother.——

——Though I shall be sorry for that, added my father: and so the debate
stopp’d again.

——They should be of leather, said my father, turning him about again.—

They will last him, said my mother, the longest.

But he can have no linings to ’em, replied my father.——

He cannot, said my mother.

’Twere better to have them of fustian, quoth my father.

Nothing can be better, quoth my mother.——

——Except dimity,—replied my father:——’Tis best of all,—replied my
mother.

——One must not give him his death, however,—interrupted my father.

By no means, said my mother:——and so the dialogue stood still again.

I am resolved, however, quoth my father, breaking silence the fourth
time, he shall have no pockets in them.——

——There is no occasion for any, said my mother.——

I mean in his coat and waistcoat,—cried my father.

——I mean so too,—replied my mother.

——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.——

Order it as you please, Mr. Shandy, replied my mother.——

——But don’t you think it right? added my father, pressing the point
home to her.

Perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases you, Mr. Shandy.——

——There’s for you! cried my father, losing his temper——Pleases me!——You
never will distinguish, Mrs. Shandy, nor shall I ever teach you to do
it, betwixt a point of pleasure and a point of convenience.——This was
on the Sunday night:——and further this chapter sayeth not.

C H A P. LXII

AFTER my father had debated the affair of the breeches with my
mother,—he consulted Albertus Rubenius upon it; and Albertus
Rubenius used my father ten times worse in the consultation (if
possible) than even my father had used my mother: For as Rubenius had
wrote a quarto express, De re Vestiaria Veterum,—it was Rubenius’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
Rubenius upon the subject.

Upon every other article of ancient dress, Rubenius was very
communicative to my father;—gave him a full satisfactory account of

The Toga, or loose gown.

The Chlamys.

The Ephod.

The Tunica, or Jacket.

The Synthesis.

The Pænula.

The Lacema, with its Cucullus.

The Paludamentum.

The Prætexta.

The Sagum, or soldier’s jerkin.

The Trabea: of which, according to Suetonius, there was three kinds.—

——But what are all these to the breeches? said my father.

Rubenius threw him down upon the counter all kinds of shoes which had
been in fashion with the Romans.——

There was,

The open shoe.

The close shoe.

The slip shoe.

The wooden shoe.

The soc.

The buskin.

And The military shoe with hobnails in it, which Juvenal takes notice
of.

There were, The clogs.

The pattins.

The pantoufles.

The brogues.

The sandals, with latchets to them.

There was, The felt shoe.

The linen shoe.

The laced shoe.

The braided shoe.

The calceus incisus.

And The calceus rostratus.

Rubenius shewed my father how well they all fitted,—in what manner
they laced on,—with what points, straps, thongs, latchets, ribbands,
jaggs, and ends.——

——But I want to be informed about the breeches, said my father.

Albertus Rubenius informed my father that the Romans 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 Egyptians coming to settle amongst them, brought
it into vogue.

——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
Augustus’s reign, when the slave dressed like his master, and almost
every distinction of habiliment was lost, but the Latus Clavus.

And what was the Latus Clavus? said my father.

Rubenius told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the
learned:——That Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius Ticinensis, Bayfius Budæus,
Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Casaubon, and Joseph Scaliger, 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 Bayfuis 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.——

——My father lost the horse, but not the saddle——They are hooks and
eyes, said my father——and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches
to be made.

C H A P. LXIII

WE are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.——

——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 latus clavus, and pointing to the precise part of
the waistband, where he was determined to have it sewed on.——

Leave we my mother—(truest of all the Poco-curante’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.——

Leave we Slop likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.——

Leave we poor Le Fever to recover, and get home from Marseilles as
he can.——And last of all,—because the hardest of all——

Let us leave, if possible, myself:——But ’tis impossible,—I must go
along with you to the end of the work.

C H A P. LXIV

IF the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of
ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle Toby’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.

When FATE 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 NATURE,—’twas enough—Nature threw half a
spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so much clay
in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,—and so little
of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much
glory, nasty in foul weather.

My uncle Toby came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans
along with him, of almost every fortified town in Italy and
Flanders; so let the duke of Marlborough, or the allies, have set
down before what town they pleased, my uncle Toby was prepared for
them.

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 Toby sitting by from morning
to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past- done
deeds,—left LABOUR little else but the ceremony of the name.

When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper
posture of defence,—it was invested,—and my uncle Toby and the
corporal began to run their first parallel.—I beg I may not be
interrupted in my story, by being told, 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;——for my uncle
Toby 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 Toby’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.

C H A P. LXV

WHEN the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle Toby 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 Toby received from the daily papers,—they went on, during the
whole siege, step by step with the allies.

When the duke of Marlborough made a lodgment,——my uncle Toby 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.

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 Marlborough, in the
main body of the place,—to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and
observed the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with Trim behind him,
sallied forth;——the one with the Gazette in his hand,—the other with
a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.——What an honest
triumph in my uncle Toby’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 chamade 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.

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 Flanders mail, and kept
them so long in torture,—but still ’twas the torture of the happy——In
this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim 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.

The first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the
plain and simple method I’ve related.

In the second year, in which my uncle Toby took Liege and
Ruremond, 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.

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
Toby, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at
Christmas, 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.

——The sentry-box was in case of rain.

All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which
enabled my uncle Toby to take the field with great splendour.

My father would often say to Yorick, that if any mortal in the whole
universe had done such a thing except his brother Toby, it would have
been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon
the parade and prancing manner in which Lewis XIV. from the beginning
of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field——But
’tis not my brother Toby’s nature, kind soul! my father would add, to
insult any one.

——But let us go on.

C H A P. LXVI

I MUST 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 Toby’s campaigns,—when upon his taking
Amberg, Bonn, and Rhinberg, and Huy and Limbourg, one after
another, a thought came into the corporal’s head, that to talk of
taking so many towns, without one TOWN to shew for it,—was a very
nonsensical way of going to work, and so proposed to my uncle Toby,
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.

My uncle Toby 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.

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 Ghent and Bruges, and the rest of the towns in
Brabant and Flanders.

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 Toby and the corporal, as the
carpenter did the work.

——It answered prodigiously the next summer——the town was a perfect
Proteus——It was Landen, and Trerebach, and Santvliet, and
Drusen, and Hagenau,—and then it was Ostend and Menin, and
Aeth and Dendermond.

——Surely never did any TOWN act so many parts, since Sodom and
Gomorrah, as my uncle Toby’s town did.

In the fourth year, my uncle Toby thinking a town looked foolishly
without a church, added a very fine one with a steeple.——Trim was for
having bells in it;——my uncle Toby said, the metal had better be cast
into cannon.

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 Toby’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.

The next year, which was that in which Lisle was besieged, and at the
close of which both Ghent and Bruges fell into our hands,—my uncle
Toby was sadly put to it for proper ammunition;——I say proper
ammunition——because his great artillery would not bear powder; and
’twas well for the Shandy 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 Toby’s
imagination with the accounts of them, that he had infallibly shot away
all his estate.

SOMETHING therefore was wanting as a succedaneum, 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 desiderata of my uncle Toby’s apparatus.

This will not be explained the worse, for setting off, as I generally
do, at a little distance from the subject.

C H A P. LXVII

WITH two or three other trinkets, small in themselves, but of great
regard, which poor Tom, the corporal’s unfortunate brother, had sent
him over, with the account of his marriage with the Jew’s
widow——there was

A Montero-cap and two Turkish tobacco-pipes.

The Montero-cap I shall describe by and bye.—The Turkish
tobacco-pipes had nothing particular in them, they were fitted up and
ornamented as usual, with flexible tubes of Morocco leather and gold
wire, and mounted at their ends, the one of them with ivory,—the other
with black ebony, tipp’d with silver.

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, Trim, he would say, to put on the cap,
or to smoke in the tobacco-pipe of a Jew.——God bless your honour, the
corporal would say (giving a strong reason to the contrary)—how can
that be?

The Montero-cap was scarlet, of a superfine Spanish 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 Portuguese quarter-master, not
of foot, but of horse, as the word denotes.

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 GALA-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 oath,—his
wager,—or his gift.

——’Twas his gift in the present case.

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.

The completion was no further off, than the very next morning; which
was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the Lower Deule, to
the right, and the gate St. Andrew,—and on the left, between St.
Magdalen’s and the river.

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 Toby prepared himself for it with a more than
ordinary solemnity.

The eve which preceded, as my uncle Toby 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
Toby, 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
Toby 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 Toby sallied out.

C H A P. LXVIII

MY uncle Toby 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.——

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 Toby, 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.

The corporal———

——Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius,——for he was your
kinsman:

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 clod of the
valley!

——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 Toby! in what corner of the world shall I seek
thy fellow?

——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.

C H A P. LXIX

THE corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply
the grand desideratum, 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 Toby’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.

Upon turning it this way, and that, a little in his mind, he soon began
to find out, that by means of his two Turkish 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
Morocco tube,—he should be able to fire the six field-pieces all
together, and with the same ease as to fire one.———

——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 beds of justice, 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, Shandy,
says Eugenius, for thou hast but a dozen in the world,—and ’twill
break thy set.——

No matter for that, Eugenius; 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 in,—he
might, per-adventure, strike something out? as sure as a gun.——

——But this project, by the bye.

The corporal sat up the best part of the night, in bringing his 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.

C H A P. LXX

THE corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle Toby,
in order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two
before my uncle Toby came.

He had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up together
in front of my uncle Toby’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.

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 puffs, as well as
the puffing, 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 Toby joined him.

’Twas well for my father, that my uncle Toby had not his will to make
that day.

C H A P. LXXI

MY uncle Toby took the ivory pipe out of the corporal’s hand,—looked
at it for half a minute, and returned it.

In less than two minutes, my uncle Toby took the pipe from the
corporal again, and raised it half way to his mouth——then hastily gave
it back a second time.

The corporal redoubled the attack,——my uncle Toby smiled,——then
looked grave,——then smiled for a moment,——then looked serious for a
long time;——Give me hold of the ivory pipe, Trim, said my uncle
Toby——my uncle Toby put it to his lips,——drew it back
directly,——gave a peep over the horn-beam hedge;——never did my uncle
Toby’s mouth water so much for a pipe in his life.——My uncle Toby
retired into the sentry-box with the pipe in his hand.———

——Dear uncle Toby! 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.

C H A P. LXXII

I BEG the reader will assist me here, to wheel off my uncle Toby’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
Garrick, we’ll snuff the candles bright,—sweep the stage with a new
broom,—draw up the curtain, and exhibit my uncle Toby 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 Toby in these, to trace these family
likenesses, betwixt the two passions (in case there is one) to your
heart’s content.

Vain science! thou assistest us in no case of this kind—and thou
puzzlest us in every one.

There was, Madam, in my uncle Toby, 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 Toby ten times in a day,
through his liver, if nine times in a day, Madam, had not served your
purpose.

With all this, Madam,—and what confounded every thing as much on the
other hand, my uncle Toby 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.

C H A P. LXXIII

OF the few legitimate sons of Adam 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.

There was the great king Aldrovandus, and Bosphorus, and
Cappadocius, and Dardanus, and Pontus, and Asius,——to say
nothing of the iron-hearted Charles the XIIth, whom the Countess of
K***** herself could make nothing of.——There was Babylonicus, and
Mediterraneus, and Polixenes, and Persicus, and Prusicus, not
one of whom (except Cappadocius and Pontus, 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
Toby—till Fate—till Fate I say, envying his name the glory of being
handed down to posterity with Aldrovandus’s and the rest,—she basely
patched up the peace of Utrecht.

——Believe me, Sirs, ’twas the worst deed she did that year.

C H A P. LXXIV

AMONGST the many ill consequences of the treaty of Utrecht, it was
within a point of giving my uncle Toby a surfeit of sieges; and
though he recovered his appetite afterwards, yet Calais itself left
not a deeper scar in Mary’s heart, than Utrecht upon my uncle
Toby’s. To the end of his life he never could hear Utrecht
mentioned upon any account whatever,—or so much as read an article of
news extracted out of the Utrecht Gazette, without fetching a sigh,
as if his heart would break in twain.

My father, who was a great MOTIVE-MONGER, 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 Toby upon these occasions, in
a way, which shewed plainly, he imagined my uncle Toby grieved for
nothing in the whole affair, so much as the loss of his
hobby-horse.——Never mind, brother Toby, 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 Toby, he
would add, to take countries without taking towns,——or towns without
sieges.

My uncle Toby 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.

I told the reader, this time two years, that my uncle Toby 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 Toby 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 Toby, for a time, was at least
equal to Tertullus——but in others, in my own opinion, infinitely
above him.

My father was so highly pleased with one of these apologetical orations
of my uncle Toby’s, which he had delivered one evening before him and
Yorick, that he wrote it down before he went to bed.

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,
MY BROTHER TOBY’S JUSTIFICATION OF HIS OWN PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT IN
WISHING TO CONTINUE THE WAR.

I may safely say, I have read over this apologetical oration of my
uncle Toby’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.

C H A P. LXXV

MY  UNCLE  TOBY’S APOLOGETICAL  ORATION

I AM not insensible, brother Shandy, 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.

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 hope, I
have been in all these, brother Shandy, 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
Shandy, 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.

Tell me then, my dear brother Shandy, upon which of them it is, that
when I condemned the peace of Utrecht, 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 Shandy, upon what one deed of
mine do you ground it? [The devil a deed do I know of, dear Toby,
but one for a hundred pounds, which I lent thee to carry on these
cursed sieges.]

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?

When Guy, Earl of Warwick, and Parismus and Parismenus, and
Valentine and Orson, and the Seven Champions of England, were
handed around the school,—were they not all purchased with my own
pocket-money? Was that selfish, brother Shandy? When we read over the
siege of Troy, which lasted ten years and eight months,——though with
such a train of artillery as we had at Namur, the town might have
been carried in a week—was I not as much concerned for the destruction
of the Greeks and Trojans 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 Helena a bitch for it? Did any one of you shed more
tears for Hector? And when king Priam came to the camp to beg his
body, and returned weeping back to Troy without it,—you know,
brother, I could not eat my dinner.——

——Did that bespeak me cruel? Or because, brother Shandy, 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?

O brother! ’tis one thing for a soldier to gather laurels,—and ’tis
another to scatter cypress.——[Who told thee, my dear Toby, that
cypress was used by the antients on mournful occasions? ]

——’Tis one thing, brother Shandy, 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 Shandy, 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.

Need I be told, dear Yorick, as I was by you, in Le Fever’s funeral
sermon, That so soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to mercy,
and kindness, as man is, was not shaped for this?——But why did you not
add, Yorick,—if not by NATURE—that he is so by NECESSITY?——For what
is war? what is it, Yorick, when fought as ours has been, upon
principles of liberty, and upon principles of honour—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 Shandy, 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.

C H A P. LXXVI

I TOLD the Christian reader—I say Christian——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——

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!——

——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.——

Quanto id diligentias in liberis procreandis cavendum, sayeth
Cardan. All which being considered, and that you see ’tis morally
impracticable for me to wind this round to where I set out——

I begin the chapter over again.

C H A P. LXXVII

I TOLD the Christian reader in the beginning of the chapter which
preceded my uncle Toby’s apologetical oration,—though in a different
trope from what I should make use of now, That the peace of Utrecht
was within an ace of creating the same shyness betwixt my uncle Toby
and his hobby-horse, as it did betwixt the queen and the rest of the
confederating powers.

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 Toby 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 viciously,
which made my uncle Toby 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 Toby and his hobby-horse.——He had no
occasion for him from the month of March to November, 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 Dunkirk were demolished, according to stipulation.

The French were so backwards all that summer in setting about that
affair, and Monsieur Tugghe, the deputy from the magistrates of
Dunkirk, 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, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *——

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ; so that the whole
went heavily on with my uncle Toby; 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!

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 Toby, for in going that way to work with
the town, the English 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, Trim, said my uncle Toby;—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 Toby, 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 Louis, 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
England.——We are there, quoth the corporal, recollecting
himself——Very true, said my uncle Toby—looking at the church.

C H A P. LXXVIII

A DELUSIVE, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt my
uncle Toby and Trim, upon the demolition of Dunkirk,—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—STILLNESS, with SILENCE at her back, entered the solitary
parlour, and drew their gauzy mantle over my uncle Toby’s head;—and
LISTLESSNESS, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down
beside him in his arm-chair.——No longer Amberg and Rhinberg, and
Limbourg, and Huy, and Bonn, in one year,—and the prospect of
Landen, and Trerebach, and Drusen, and Dendermond, 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 Toby, after passing the French
lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence break into the heart of
France,—cross over the Oyes, and with all Picardie open behind
him, march up to the gates of Paris, 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 Bastile, and awake with it streaming
in his head.

——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 Toby?

C H A P. LXXIX

NOW, because I have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of
talking, That I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle
Toby’s courtship of widow Wadman, 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 what love is? whether part God and part
Devil, as Plotinus will have it——

——Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be
as ten——to determine with Ficinus, “How many parts of it—the
one,—and how many the other;”—or whether it is all of it one great
Devil, from head to tail, as Plato has taken upon him to pronounce;
concerning which conceit of his, I shall not offer my opinion:—but my
opinion of Plato is this; that he appears, from this instance, to
have been a man of much the same temper and way of reasoning with
doctor Baynyard, 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 Cantharidis.——

I have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this monstrous
liberty in arguing, but what Nazianzen cried out (that is,
polemically) to Philagrius——

“’Ευγε!” O rare! ’tis fine reasoning, Sir indeed!—“οτι φιλοσοφεισ ευ
Παθεσ.” and most nobly do you aim at truth, when you philosophize
about it in your moods and passions.

Nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, I should stop to
inquire, whether love is a disease,——or embroil myself with Rhasis
and Dioscorides, 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
Aœtius, 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
Hanea;—and where Aœtius durst venture it,—his topaz-ring.

——The other, that of Gordonius, who (in his cap. 15. de Amore)
directs they should be thrashed, “ad putorem usque,”——till they stink
again.

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 Toby’s affairs: I must anticipate thus much, That from his
theories of love, (with which, by the way, he contrived to crucify my
uncle Toby’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 Toby a new pair of breeches, he produced
Gordonius’s effect upon my uncle Toby without the disgrace.

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 Toby,——it had a vile effect upon the house;——and
if my uncle Toby had not smoaked it down as he did, it might have had
a vile effect upon my father too.

C H A P. LXXX

——’TWILL 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.

At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in telling the
reader, my uncle Toby fell in love:

—Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is
fallen in love,—or that he is deeply in love,—or up to the ears in
love,—and sometimes even over head and ears in it,—carries an
idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a
man:—this is recurring again to Plato’s opinion, which, with all his
divinityship,—I hold to be damnable and heretical:—and so much for
that.

Let love therefore be what it will,—my uncle Toby fell into it.

——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 Wadman.

C H A P. LXXXI

TO 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.

——Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet!—so exquisite!

——Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle Toby resist it?

Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy
covers, which MALICE will not blacken, and which IGNORANCE cannot
misrepresent.

C H A P. LXXXII

AS Susannah was informed by an express from Mrs. Bridget, of my
uncle Toby’s falling in love with her mistress fifteen days before it
happened,—the contents of which express, Susannah communicated to my
mother the next day,—it has just given me an opportunity of entering
upon my uncle Toby’s amours a fortnight before their existence.

I have an article of news to tell you, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother,
which will surprise you greatly.——

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.——

“—My brother Toby, quoth she, is going to be married to Mrs.
Wadman.”

——Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his
bed again as long as he lives.

It was a consuming vexation to my father, that my mother never asked
the meaning of a thing she did not understand.

——That she is not a woman of science, my father would say—is her
misfortune—but she might ask a question.—

My mother never did.——In short, she went out of the world at last
without knowing whether it turned round, or stood still.——My father
had officiously told her above a thousand times which way it was,—but
she always forgot.

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.

If he marries, ’twill be the worse for us,—quoth my mother.

Not a cherry-stone, said my father,—he may as well batter away his
means upon that, as any thing else,

——To be sure, said my mother: so here ended the proposition—the
reply,—and the rejoinder, I told you of.

It will be some amusement to him, too,——said my father.

A very great one, answered my mother, if he should have children.——

——Lord have mercy upon me,—said my father to himself——* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

C H A P. LXXXIII

I AM 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 Toby’s story, and my own, in a
tolerable straight line. Now,

four very squiggly lines across the page signed Inv.T.S and Scw.T.S

These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third,
and fourth volumes[32]——In the fifth volume I have been very good,——the
precise line I have described in it being this:

One very squiggly line across the page with loops marked
A,B,C,C,C,C,C,D.

By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a
trip to Navarre,—and the indented curve B. which is the short airing
when I was there with the Lady Baussiere and her page,—I have not
taken the least frisk of a digression, till John de la Casse’s devils
led me the round you see marked D.—for as for c c c c c 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.

In this last volume I have done better still—for from the end of Le
Fever’s episode, to the beginning of my uncle Toby’s campaigns,—I
have scarce stepped a yard out of my way.

If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible——by the good leave of his
grace of Benevento’s devils——but I may arrive hereafter at the
excellency of going on even thus:

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.

This right line,—the path-way for Christians to walk in! say
divines——

——The emblem of moral rectitude! says Cicero——

——The best line! say cabbage planters——is the shortest line, says
Archimedes, which can be drawn from one given point to another.——

I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart, in your next
birth- day suits!

——What a journey!

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 GRAVITATION?

 [32] Alluding to the first edition.

C H A P. LXXXIV

NO——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 machine, 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.

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 DEATH 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——

“—There must certainly be some mistake in this matter,” quoth he.

Now there is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be
interrupted in a story——and I was that moment telling Eugenius 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——

“—Did ever so grave a personage get into so vile a scrape?” quoth
Death. Thou hast had a narrow escape, Tristram, said Eugenius,
taking hold of my hand as I finished my story——

But there is no living, Eugenius, replied I, at this rate; for as
this son of a whore has found out my lodgings——

—You call him rightly, said Eugenius,—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 Eugenius 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, Eugenius, fly for my life? ’Tis my
advice, my dear Tristram, said Eugenius—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 Garonne; and if I hear
him clattering at my heels——I’ll scamper away to mount Vesuvius——from
thence to Joppa, and from Joppa to the world’s end; where, if he
follows me, I pray God he may break his neck——

—He runs more risk there, said Eugenius, than thou.

Eugenius’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——Allons! 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 Dover.

C H A P. LXXXV

NOW hang it! quoth I, as I look’d towards the French coast—a man
should know something of his own country too, before he goes
abroad——and I never gave a peep into Rochester church, or took notice
of the dock of Chatham, or visited St. Thomas at Canterbury,
though they all three laid in my way——

—But mine, indeed, is a particular case——

So without arguing the matter further with Thomas o’Becket, or any
one else—I skip’d into the boat, and in five minutes we got under sail,
and scudded away like the wind.

Pray, captain, quoth I, as I was going down into the cabin, is a man
never overtaken by Death in this passage?

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——

Sick! sick! sick! sick!——

—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?

The wind chopp’d about! s’Death—then I shall meet him full in the face.

What luck!—’tis chopp’d about again, master——O the devil chop it——

Captain, quoth she, for heaven’s sake, let us get ashore.

C H A P. LXXXVI

IT is a great inconvenience to a man in a haste, that there are three
distinct roads between Calais and Paris, 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.

First, the road by Lisle and Arras, which is the most about——but
most interesting, and instructing.

The second, that by Amiens, which you may go, if you would see
Chantilly——

And that by Beauvais, which you may go, if you will.

For this reason a great many chuse to go by Beauvais.

C H A P. LXXXVII

“NOW before I quit Calais,” 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 wrote and
gallop’d—or who have gallop’d and wrote, which is a different way
still; or who, for more expedition than the rest, have wrote
galloping, which is the way I do at present——from the great Addison,
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.

For my own part, as heaven is my judge, and to which I shall ever make
my last appeal—I know no more of Calais (except the little my barber
told me of it as he was whetting his razor) than I do this moment of
Grand Cairo; 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 Calais 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 Calais itself—and where, sir, would be
the wonder? was not Democritus, who laughed ten times more than
I—town-clerk of Abdera? and was not (I forget his name) who had more
discretion than us both, town-clerk of Ephesus?——it should be penn’d
moreover, sir, with so much knowledge and good sense, and truth, and
precision——

—Nay—if you don’t believe me, you may read the chapter for your pains.

C H A P. LXXXVIII

CALAIS, Calatium, Calusium, Calesium.

This town, if we may trust its archives, the authority of which I see
no reason to call in question in this place—was once no more than a
small village belonging to one of the first Counts de Guignes; and as
it boasts at present of no less than fourteen thousand inhabitants,
exclusive of four hundred and twenty distinct families in the basse
ville, or suburbs——it must have grown up by little and little, I
suppose, to its present size.

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 Mary; 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 Calvary
itself—therefore, I suppose it must be high enough in all conscience.

There was nothing struck me more than the great Square; 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 Calais,
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 French in general have more reason on
their side in calling them Places than Squares, which, strictly
speaking, to be sure, they are not.

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.

I have heard much of it, but there is nothing at all curious in the
Courgain; ’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 La Tour de Guet, 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.

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 Philip of France, Count of Bologne,
to the present war, wherein many reparations were made, have cost (as I
learned afterwards from an engineer in Gascony)—above a hundred
millions of livres. It is very remarkable, that at the Tête de
Gravelenes, 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 said and done, it must be acknowledged that
Calais 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 France: it was not without its
inconveniences also; being no less troublesome to the English in
those times, than Dunkirk 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 Calais, 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 Edward the Third a whole year, and was not terminated
at last but by famine and extreme misery; the gallantry of Eustace de
St. Pierre, 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 Rapin’s own words:

C H A P. LXXXIX

——BUT 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.

—So put on, my brave boy! and make the best of thy way to Boulogne.

C H A P. XC

——BOULOGNE!——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, Size-ace! quoth I. No; quoth a
third, the gentleman has been committing———

Ah! ma chere fille! 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 Ace, for a thousand pounds; nor would
I, quoth Size, for six times the sum—Well thrown, Size-ace, again!
quoth I;—but I have no debt but the debt of NATURE, 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——

——Now, in troth, ’tis a great pity, quoth mine Irish host, that all
this good courtship should be lost; for the young gentlewoman has been
after going out of hearing of it all along.——

——Simpleton! quoth I.

——So you have nothing else in Boulogne worth seeing?

—By Jasus! there is the finest SEMINARY for the HUMANITIES——

—There cannot be a finer; quoth I.

C H A P. XCI

WHEN 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!

As I never give general characters either of men or things in choler,
“the most haste the worse speed,” 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;

That something is always wrong in a French post-chaise, upon first
setting out.

Or the proposition may stand thus:

A French postilion has always to alight before he has got three
hundred yards out of town.

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.

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 Sovereignty would have pawn’d her jewels for them.
Just heaven! {What masticators!—/What bread!—

and so as he finished the last mouthful of it, we entered the town of
Montreuil.

C H A P. XCII

THERE is not a town in all France which, in my opinion, looks better
in the map, than MONTREUIL;——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.

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
Amiens, and six at Paris, in going through her classes; so knits,
and sews, and dances, and does the little coquetries very well.——

—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.——

——That Nature should have told this creature a word about a statue’s
thumb!

—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 Janatone 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.——

—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 Austreberte which has been transported
from Artois hither—every thing is just I suppose as the masons and
carpenters left them,—and if the belief in Christ 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,
Janatone, 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
Dinah, was she alive——’faith, scarce for her picture——were it but
painted by Reynolds—

But if I go on with my drawing, after naming that son of Apollo, I’ll
be shot——

So you must e’en be content with the original; which, if the evening is
fine in passing thro’ Montreuil, 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 devote: but that,
sir, is a terce to a nine in your favour——

—L— help me! I could not count a single point: so had been piqued and
repiqued, and capotted to the devil.

C H A P. XCIII

ALL which being considered, and that Death moreover might be much
nearer me than I imagined——I wish I was at Abbeville, quoth I, were
it only to see how they card and spin——so off we set.

[33]de Montreuil a Nampont - poste et demi
de Nampont a Bernay - - - - - - poste
de Bernay a Nouvion - - - - - poste
de Nouvion a ABBEVILLE  poste
——but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed.

 [33] Vid. Book of French post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762.

C H A P. XCIV

WHAT 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.

C H A P. XCV

WAS 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 Abbeville——if there was not
another inn in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the
capitulation: so

Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning——Yes, by
four, Sir,——or by Genevieve! I’ll raise a clatter in the house shall
wake the dead.

C H A P. XCVI

“MAKE them like unto a wheel,” is a bitter sarcasm, as all the
learned know, against the grand tour, and that restless spirit for
making it, which David prophetically foresaw would haunt the children
of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop
Hall, ’tis one of the severest imprecations which David 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.

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——

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——

Now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but not whereonto,
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 Palestine 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.

I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear
Jenny) for their “Χωξισμον απο τκ Εωμαιος, εις το καλως
φιλοσοφειν”——[their] “getting out of the body, in order to think well.”

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——REASON is, half of
it, SENSE; and the measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our
present appetites and concoctions.——

——But which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly
in the wrong?

You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so early.

C H A P. XCVII

——But she did not know I was under a vow not to shave my beard till I
got to Paris;——yet I hate to make mysteries of nothing;——’tis the
cold cautiousness of one of those little souls from which Lessius
(lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24.) hath made his estimate,
wherein he setteth forth, That one Dutch 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 Adam) as can possibly be damn’d to the end of the
world.

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
Franciscus Ribbera’s head, who pretends that no less a space than one
of two hundred Italian miles multiplied into itself, will be
sufficient to hold the like number——he certainly must have gone upon
some of the old Roman 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.

In Lessius’s time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little as
can be imagined——

——We find them less now——

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.

Blessed Jupiter! and blessed every other heathen god and goddess! for
now ye will all come into play again, and with Priapus 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.

C H A P. XCVIII

——“So hating, I say, to make mysteries of nothing”——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 Ailly au clochers, 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
France).

And so making all possible speed, from

Ailly au clochers, I got to Hixcourt,
from Hixcourt I got to Pequignay, and
from Pequignay, I got to AMIENS,
concerning which town I have nothing to inform you, but what I have
informed you once before——and that was—that Janatone went there to
school.

C H A P. XCIX

IN 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.

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 Euclid, 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.

—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
Louis 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 le Curé 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 priesthood (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.

It was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes, or I had pass’d
clean by the stables of Chantilly——

——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
Chantilly 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.
Dennis, without turning my head so much as on one side towards the
Abby——

——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 Jaidas’s lantern——nor for that either, only as it grows dark,
it might be of use.

C H A P. C

CRACK, crack——crack, crack——crack, crack—so this is Paris! quoth I
(continuing in the same mood)—and this is Paris!——humph!——Paris!
cried I, repeating the name the third time——

The first, the finest, the most brilliant——

The streets however are nasty.

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 Paris 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——

——But ’tis the spirit of thy nation; so crack—crack on.

Ha!——and no one gives the wall!——but in the SCHOOL of URBANITY herself,
if the walls are besh-t—how can you do otherwise?

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, encore——

——’Tis too much for sinners.

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
Paris 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.

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 Paris: the French love good eating——they are all
gourmands——we shall rank high; if their god is their belly——their
cooks must be gentlemen: and forasmuch as the periwig maketh the man,
and the periwig-maker maketh the periwig—ergo, would the barbers say,
we shall rank higher still—we shall be above you all—we shall be
Capitouls[34] at least—pardi! we shall all wear swords——

—And so, one would swear, (that is, by candle-light,—but there is no
depending upon it,) they continued to do, to this day.

 [34] Chief Magistrate in Toulouse, &c. &c. &c.

C H A P. CI

THE French 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, “That they who have seen Paris, have seen every thing,”
they must mean to speak of those who have seen it by day-light.

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 Paris—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 seen, felt,
heard, and understood (which, by the bye, is a quotation from
Lilly)——the devil a one of us out of fifty, can get our heads fairly
thrust in amongst them.

This is no part of the French computation: ’tis simply this,

That by the last survey taken in the year one thousand seven hundred
and sixteen, since which time there have been considerable
augmentations, Paris doth contain nine hundred streets; (viz)

In the quarter called the City—there are
    fifty-three streets.

In St. James of the Shambles,
    fifty-five streets.

In St. Oportune, thirty-four streets.

In the quarter of the Louvre,
    twenty-five streets.

In the Palace Royal, or St. Honorius,
    forty-nine streets.

In Mont. Martyr, forty-one streets.

In St. Eustace, twenty-nine streets.

In the Halles, twenty-seven streets.

In St. Dennis, fifty-five streets.

In St. Martin, fifty-four streets.

In St. Paul, or the Mortellerie,
    twenty-seven streets.

The Greve, thirty-eight streets.

In St. Avoy, or the Verrerie,
    nineteen streets.

In the Marais, or the Temple,
    fifty-two streets.

In St. Antony’s, sixty-eight streets.

In the Place Maubert, eighty-one streets.

In St. Bennet, sixty streets.

In St. Andrews de Arcs, fifty-one streets.

In the quarter of the Luxembourg,
    sixty-two streets.

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. Roche and Sulpice - - -
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—

——Then you will have seen——

——but ’tis what no one needeth to tell you, for you will read of it
yourself upon the portico of the Louvre, in these words,

[35]EARTH NO SUCH FOLKS!—NO FOLKS E’ER SUCH A TOWN

AS PARIS IS!—SING, DERRY, DERRY, DOWN.

The French have a gay way of treating every thing that is Great;
and that is all can be said upon it.

 [35] Non orbis gentem, non urbem gens habet ullam
——————ulla parem.

C H A P. CII

IN mentioning the word gay (as in the close of the last chapter) it
puts one (i.e. an author) in mind of the word spleen——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—

S P L E E N

This, upon leaving Chantilly, 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 Garonne—

——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——

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 Fontainebleau
before the king——

—Was he going there? not that I know——

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME

Tristram Shandy

Tristram Shandy




THE
LIFE AND OPINIONS
OF
TRISTRAM SHANDY,
GENTLEMAN
———
Volume the Fourth
———

Non enim excursus hic ejus, sed opus ipsum est.

PLIN. Lib. V. Epist. 6.

Si quid urbaniusculè lusum a nobis, per Musas et Charitas et omnium
poëtarum Numina, Oro te, ne me malè capias.

A

D E D I C A T I O N

TO

A GREAT MAN

HAVING, a priori, intended to dedicate The Amours of my Uncle Toby
to Mr. ***——I see more reasons, a posteriori, for doing it to Lord
*******.

    I should lament from my soul, if this exposed me to the jealousy of
    their Reverences; because a posteriori, in Court-latin, signifies
    the kissing hands for preferment—or any thing else—in order to get
    it.

DEDICATION

    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.

    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.

Nothing is so perfectly amusement 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,

Whose thoughts proud Science never taught to stray,
Far as the Statesman’s walk or Patriot-way;
Yet simple Nature to his hopes had given
Out of a cloud-capp’d head a humbler heaven;
Some untam’d World in depths of wood embraced—
Some happier Island in the wat’ry-waste—
And where admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful Dogs should bear him company.

In a word, by thus introducing an entire new set of objects to his
Imagination, I shall unavoidably give a Diversion to his passionate
and love-sick Contemplations. In the mean time,

I am
THE AUTHOR.

C H A P.   I

NOW I hate to hear a person, especially if he be a traveller, complain
that we do not get on so fast in France as we do in England;
whereas we get on much faster, consideratis considerandis; 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 French 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 that ear which the reader chuses to lend me—I might not
dissatisfy the other which he keeps to himself.

——My ink burns my finger to try——and when I have——’twill have a worse
consequence——It will burn (I fear) my paper.

——No;——I dare not——

But if you wish to know how the abbess of Andoüillets 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.

C H A P. II

THE abbess of Andoüillets, which if you look into the large set of
provincial maps now publishing at Paris, you will find situated
amongst the hills which divide Burgundy from Savoy, being in danger
of an Anchylosis or stiff joint (the sinovia 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 Lystra, 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 Bourbon——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 Bourbon, Margarita, the little
novice, was elected as the companion of the journey.

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.——

——The carpenter and the smith of Andoüillets 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 Bourbon—two
rows of the unfortunate stood ready there an hour before.

The abbess of Andoüillets, supported by Margarita the novice,
advanced slowly to the calesh, both clad in white, with their black
rosaries hanging at their breasts——

——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 Margarita 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 Margarita laid their hands saint-wise upon their breasts—look’d
up to heaven—then to them—and look’d “God bless you, dear sisters.”

I declare I am interested in this story, and wish I had been there.

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 hows and whens 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.

Man is a creature born to habitudes. The day had been sultry—the
evening was delicious—the wine was generous—the Burgundian 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.”

—The muleteer was a son of Adam, I need not say a word more. He gave
the mules, each of ’em, a sound lash, and looking in the abbess’s and
Margarita’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.

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 Andoüillets, &c. &c. and out
of friendship for the abbess and Mademoiselle Margarita, who was only
in her noviciate, he had come along with them from the confines of
Savoy, &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 Bourbon 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 downwards (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 Margarita.

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,——

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.——

And so with one consent they stopp’d thus——

C H A P. III

——Get on with you, said the abbess.

——Wh - - - - - ysh——ysh——cried Margarita.

Sh - - - a——shu - u——shu - - u—sh - - aw——shaw’d the abbess.

——Whu—v—w—whew—w—w—whuv’d Margarita, pursing up her sweet lips
betwixt a hoot and a whistle.

Thump—thump—thump—obstreperated the abbess of Andoüillets with the
end of her gold-headed cane against the bottom of the calesh——

The old mule let a f—

C H A P. IV

WE are ruin’d and undone, my child, said the abbess to Margarita,——we
shall be here all night——we shall be plunder’d——we shall be ravished——

——We shall be ravish’d, said Margarita, as sure as a gun.

Sancta Maria! cried the abbess (forgetting the O!)—why was I
govern’d by this wicked stiff joint? why did I leave the convent of
Andoüillets? and why didst thou not suffer thy servant to go
unpolluted to her tomb?

O my finger! my finger! cried the novice, catching fire at the word
servant—why was I not content to put it here, or there, any where
rather than be in this strait?

Strait! said the abbess.

Strait——said the novice; for terror had struck their
understandings——the one knew not what she said——the other what she
answer’d.

O my virginity! virginity! cried the abbess.

——inity!——inity! said the novice, sobbing.

C H A P. V

MY 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
Margarita calmly—but they are words sinful—What are they? quoth the
abbess, interrupting her: They are sinful in the first degree, answered
Margarita,—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 Andoüillets——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.

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 Margarita, with their black rosaries!

Rouse! rouse!——but ’tis too late—the horrid words are pronounced this
moment——

——and how to tell them—Ye, who can speak of every thing existing, with
unpolluted lips—instruct me——guide me——

C H A P. VI

ALL 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.

Now I see no sin in saying, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, a hundred times
together; nor is there any turpitude in pronouncing the syllable ger,
ger, ger, ger, ger, were it from our matins to our vespers: Therefore,
my dear daughter, continued the abbess of Andoüillets—I will say
bou, and thou shalt say ger; and then alternately, as there is no
more sin in fou than in bou—Thou shalt say fou—and I will come in
(like fa, sol, la, re, mi, ut, at our complines) with ter. And
accordingly the abbess, giving the pitch note, set off thus:

Abbess, )  Bou - - bou - - bou - -
Margarita,) ——ger, - - ger, - - ger.
Margarita,)  Fou...fou...fou..
Abbess, ) —ter, - - ter, - - ter.

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.

Abbess, )  Bou. bou. bou. bou. bou. bou.
Margarita,) —ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, ger.

Quicker still, cried Margarita.

Fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou.

Quicker still, cried Margarita.

Bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou.

Quicker still—God preserve me; said the abbess—They do not understand
us, cried Margarita—But the Devil does, said the abbess of
Andoüillets.

C H A P. VII

WHAT 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 FONTAINBLEAU, and SENS, and JOIGNY, and AUXERRE, and
DIJON the capital of Burgundy, and CHALLON, and Mâcon the capital
of the Maconese, and a score more upon the road to LYONS——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——

—Why, ’tis a strange story! Tristram.

——Alas! Madam,

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——

——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.

——Pray reach me my fool’s cap——I fear you sit upon it, Madam——’tis
under the cushion——I’ll put it on——

Bless me! you have had it upon your head this half hour.——There then
let it stay, with a

Fa-ra diddle di

and a fa-ri diddle d

and a high-dum—dye-dum

    fiddle - - - dumb - c.

And now, Madam, we may venture, I hope a little to go on.

C H A P. VIII

——All you need say of Fontainbleau (in case you are ask’d) is, that
it stands about forty miles (south something) from Paris, in the
middle of a large forest—That there is something great in it—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 English 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——

Though there are two reasons why you need not talk loud of this to
every one.

First, Because ’twill make the said nags the harder to be got; and

Secondly, ’Tis not a word of it true.——Allons!

As for SENS——you may dispatch—in a word——“’Tis an archiepiscopal
see.”

——For JOIGNY—the less, I think, one says of it the better.

But for AUXERRE—I could go on for ever: for in my grand tour through
Europe, in which, after all, my father (not caring to trust me with
any one) attended me himself, with my uncle Toby, and Trim, and
Obadiah, 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 SHANDY HALL, to keep things right
during the expedition; in which, I say, my father stopping us two days
at Auxerre, 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 AUXERRE: in short, wherever my father went——but ’twas more
remarkably so, in this journey through France and Italy, 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 Toby and Trim—(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 Europe, 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.——

——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
AUXERRE.

——As I have mentioned it—’tis too slight to be kept suspended; and when
’tis wove in, there is an end of it.

We’ll go, brother Toby, said my father, whilst dinner is coddling—to
the abbey of Saint Germain, if it be only to see these bodies, of
which Monsieur Sequier has given such a recommendation.——I’ll go see
any body, quoth my uncle Toby; 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 Toby——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 Germain.

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 Benedictines—but our curiosity
has led us to see the bodies, of which Monsieur Sequier 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. Heribald——This, said the sacristan,
laying his hand upon the tomb, was a renowned prince of the house of
Bavaria, who under the successive reigns of Charlemagne, Louis le
Debonnair, and Charles the Bald, bore a great sway in the
government, and had a principal hand in bringing every thing into order
and discipline——

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.

My uncle Toby and Trim 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 Toby and Trim so much harder
than him, ’twas a relative triumph; and put him into the gayest humour
in the world.

——And pray what do you call this gentleman? quoth my father, rather
sportingly: This tomb, said the young Benedictine, looking downwards,
contains the bones of Saint MAXIMA, who came from Ravenna on purpose
to touch the body——

——Of Saint MAXIMUS, 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 Germain, the builder of the abbey——And what did she
get by it? said my uncle Toby——What does any woman get by it? said my
father——MARTYRDOME; replied the young Benedictine, 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 Benedictine, that St. Maxima has lain in this tomb four hundred
years, and two hundred before her canonization——’Tis but a slow rise,
brother Toby, quoth my father, in this self-same army of martyrs.——A
desperate slow one, an’ please your honour, said Trim, unless one
could purchase——I should rather sell out entirely, quoth my uncle
Toby——I am pretty much of your opinion, brother Toby, said my
father.

——Poor St. Maxima! said my uncle Toby low to himself, as we turn’d
from her tomb: She was one of the fairest and most beautiful ladies
either of Italy or France, 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 Optat,
Sir, answered the sacristan——And properly is Saint Optat plac’d! said
my father: And what is Saint Optat’s story? continued he. Saint
Optat, replied the sacristan, was a bishop——

——I thought so, by heaven! cried my father, interrupting him—Saint
Optat!——how should Saint Optat fail? so snatching out his
pocket-book, and the young Benedictine 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 Optat’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 Auxerre.

—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
Shandy, quoth my uncle Toby—the corporal and I will mount the
ramparts.

C H A P. IX

——NOW this is the most puzzled skein of all——for in this last chapter,
as far at least as it has help’d me through Auxerre, 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 Auxerre in this
journey which I am writing now, and I am got half way out of Auxerre
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
Auxerre with my father and my uncle Toby, in our way back to
dinner——and I am this moment also entering Lyons with my post-chaise
broke into a thousand pieces—and I am moreover this moment in a
handsome pavillion built by Pringello,[36] upon the banks of the
Garonne, which Mons. Sligniac has lent me, and where I now sit
rhapsodising all these affairs.

——Let me collect myself, and pursue my journey.

 [36] The same Don Pringello, the celebrated Spanish architect, of
 whom my cousin Antony has made such honourable mention in a scholium
 to the Tale inscribed to his name.—Vid. p.129, small edit.

C H A P. X

I AM glad of it, said I, settling the account with myself, as I walk’d
into Lyons——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 Avignon, 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 Languedoc 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 Rhône, with the VIVARES on my
right hand, and DAUPHINY on my left, scarce seeing the ancient cities
of VIENNE, Valence, and Vivieres. What a flame will it rekindle in
the lamp, to snatch a blushing grape from the Hermitage and Cotê
roti, 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.

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
Andoüillets’ 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.

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——

——Do, my dear Jenny, 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——

’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,
Tristram, and I am satisfied, saidst thou, whispering these words in
my ear, * * * *  * *  * * * *  * * *  * * * * * *;—* * * * * *  * *
*——any other man would have sunk down to the centre——

——Every thing is good for something, quoth I.

——I’ll go into Wales 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.

——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.

C H A P. XI

TO those who call vexations, VEXATIONS, as knowing what they are, there
could not be a greater, than to be the best part of a day at Lyons,
the most opulent and flourishing city in France, enriched with the
most fragments of antiquity—and not be able to see it. To be withheld
upon any account, must be a vexation; but to be withheld by a
vexation——must certainly be, what philosophy justly calls

VEXATION
upon
VEXATION.

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 Lyons 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 Lippius of Basil, in the first place——

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——

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 China, wrote (not in the Tartarean, but)
in the Chinese language, and in the Chinese character too.

Now I almost know as little of the Chinese language, as I do of the
mechanism of Lippius’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.

When these curiosities are seen, quoth I, half addressing myself to my
valet de place, who stood behind me——’twill be no hurt if we go to
the church of St. Irenæus, and see the pillar to which Christ was
tied——and after that, the house where Pontius Pilate lived——’Twas at
the next town, said the valet de place—at Vienne; 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 Tomb of the two lovers.”

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.

C H A P. XII

O! THERE 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——

     Amandus——He
     Amanda——She——

each ignorant of the other’s course,
     He——east
     She——west
Amandus taken captive by the Turks, and carried to the emperor of
Morocco’s court, where the princess of Morocco falling in love with
him, keeps him twenty years in prison for the love of his Amanda.——

She—(Amanda) all the time wandering barefoot, and with dishevell’d
hair, o’er rocks and mountains, enquiring for Amandus!——Amandus!
Amandus!—making every hill and valley to echo back his name——

Amandus! Amandus!

at every town and city, sitting down forlorn at the gate——Has
Amandus!—has my Amandus 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 Lyons, their
native city, and each in well-known accents calling out aloud,

Is Amandus

still alive?

Is my Amanda

they fly into each other’s arms, and both drop down dead for joy.

There is a soft æra in every gentle mortal’s life, where such a story
affords more pabulum to the brain, than all the Frusts, and
Crusts, and Rusts of antiquity, which travellers can cook up for
it.

——’Twas all that stuck on the right side of the cullender in my own, of
what Spon and others, in their accounts of Lyons, had strained
into it; and finding, moreover, in some Itinerary, but in what God
knows——That sacred to the fidelity of Amandus and Amanda, 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 tomb of the lovers 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 Lyons—and sometimes not so
much as see even a Lyons-waistcoat, 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 Mecca, and so
little short, except in wealth, of the Santa Casa itself, that some
time or other, I would go a pilgrimage (though I had no other business
at Lyons) on purpose to pay it a visit.”

In my list, therefore, of Videnda at Lyons, this, tho’ last,—was
not, you see, least ; 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 basse cour, 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 Le Blanc, for a
pleasant voyage down the Rhône——when I was stopped at the gate——

C H A P. XIII

——’TWAS 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.

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 proposition, the reply, and rejoinder, 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——

—But with an ass, I can commune for ever.

Come, Honesty! said I,——seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt
him and the gate——art thou for coming in, or going out?

The ass twisted his head round to look up the street——

Well—replied I—we’ll wait a minute for thy driver:

——He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the
opposite way——

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.

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, Jack! 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 how an ass would eat a macaroon——than of
benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act.

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.

The word was but one-half of it pronounced, like the abbess of
Andoüillet’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.

      Out upon it!

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

Out upon it! in my opinion, should have come in here——but this I
leave to be settled by

The
REVIEWERS
of
MY BREECHES,

which I have brought over along with me for that purpose.

C H A P. XIV

WHEN all was set to rights, I came down stairs again into the basse
cour with my valet de place, 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.

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.

Upon what account? said I.——’Tis upon the part of the king, replied the
commissary, heaving up both his shoulders——

——My good friend, quoth I——as sure as I am I—and you are you——

——And who are you? said he.——

——Don’t puzzle me; said I.

C H A P. XV

——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 France nothing but my good will; for he is a very honest
man, and I wish him all health and pastime in the world——

Pardonnez moi—replied the commissary, you are indebted to him six
livres four sous, for the next post from hence to St. Fons, in your
route to Avignon—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——

——But I don’t go by land; said I.

——You may if you please; replied the commissary——

Your most obedient servant——said I, making him a low bow——

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.

——The devil take the serious character of these people! quoth I—(aside)
they understand no more of Irony than this——

The comparison was standing close by with his panniers—but something
seal’d up my lips—I could not pronounce the name—

Sir, said I, collecting myself—it is not my intention to take post——

—But you may—said he, persisting in his first reply—you may take post
if you chuse——

—And I may take salt to my pickled herring, said I, if I chuse—

—But I do not chuse—

—But you must pay for it, whether you do or no.

Aye! for the salt; said I (I know)——

—And for the post too; added he. Defend me! cried I——

I travel by water—I am going down the Rhône this very afternoon—my
baggage is in the boat—and I have actually paid nine livres for my
passage——

C’est tout egal—’tis all one; said he.

Bon Dieu! what, pay for the way I go! and for the way I do not go!

——C’est tout egal; replied the commissary——

——The devil it is! said I—but I will go to ten thousand Bastiles
first——

O England! England! 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.

When the director of Madam Le Blanc’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——

I go by WATER—said I—and here’s another will be for making me pay for
going by OIL.

C H A P. XVI

AS 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:

And so I set off thus:——

——And pray, Mr. Commissary, by what law of courtesy is a defenceless
stranger to be used just the reverse from what you use a Frenchman in
this matter?

By no means; said he.

Excuse me; said I—for you have begun, Sir, with first tearing off my
breeches—and now you want my pocket——

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——

As it is——

——’Tis contrary to the law of nature.

——’Tis contrary to reason.

——’Tis contrary to the GOSPEL.

But not to this——said he—putting a printed paper into my hand,

PAR le ROY.

———’Tis a pithy prolegomenon, quoth I—and so read on — — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

——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 Paris—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 Paris to
Avignon, &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 REVENUES are not to fall short through your fickleness——

——O by heavens! cried I—if fickleness is taxable in France—we have
nothing to do but to make the best peace with you we can——

AND SO THE PEACE WAS MADE;

——And if it is a bad one—as Tristram Shandy laid the corner-stone of
it—nobody but Tristram Shandy ought to be hanged.

C H A P. XVII

THOUGH 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
their remarks for the future) “my remarks were stolen”——Never did
sorry traveller make such a pother and racket about his remarks as I
did about mine, upon the occasion.

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?——

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 Le Blanc! Madam Le
Blanc! did you see any papers of mine?—you maid of the house! run up
stairs—François! run up after her——

—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?

Sancho Pança, when he lost his ass’s FURNITURE, did not exclaim more
bitterly.

C H A P. XVIII

WHEN 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
whole oath into a vacancy in my life, I think it was into that—— * *
* * * * * * *, said I—and so my remarks through France, 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 Louis d’Ors—and giving him a post-chaise (by
heaven) worth six into the bargain; had it been to Dodsley, or
Becket, 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,
François,—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.

C H A P. XIX

WHEN we arrived at the chaise-vamper’s house, both the house and the
shop were shut up; it was the eighth of September, the nativity of
the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of God—

——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——

The French women, by the bye, love May-poles, à la folie—that is,
as much as their matins——give ’em but a May-pole, whether in May,
June, July or September—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
France), to send them but plenty of May-poles——

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.

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——

O Seigneur! cried I—you have got all my remarks upon your head,
Madam!——J’en suis bien mortifiée, said she——’tis well, thinks I, they
have stuck there—for could they have gone deeper, they would have made
such confusion in a French woman’s noddle—She had better have gone
with it unfrizled, to the day of eternity.

Tenez—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,——

They will be worse twisted still.

C H A P. XX

ANS now for Lippius’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 Chinese history, &c. except the time, said François——for ’tis
almost eleven—then we must speed the faster, said I, striding it away
to the cathedral.

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
Lippius’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
Chinese 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——

——And so away I posted to the college of the Jesuits.

Now it is with the project of getting a peep at the history of China
in Chinese 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——

For all the JESUITS had got the cholic—and to that degree, as never
was known in the memory of the oldest practitioner.

C H A P. XXI

AS I knew the geography of the Tomb of the Lovers, as well as if I had
lived twenty years in Lyons, namely, that it was upon the turning of
my right hand, just without the gate, leading to the Fauxbourg de
Vaise——I dispatched François 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——

—Tender and faithful spirits! cried I, addressing myself to Amandus
and Amanda—long—long have I tarried to drop this tear upon your
tomb——I come——I come——

When I came—there was no tomb to drop it upon.

What would I have given for my uncle Toby, to have whistled Lillo
bullero!

C H A P. XXII

NO matter how, or in what mood—but I flew from the tomb of the
lovers—or rather I did not fly from 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 Rhône and the Saôn met
together, and carried me down merrily betwixt them.

But I have described this voyage down the Rhône, before I made it——

——So now I am at Avignon, and as there is nothing to see but the old
house, in which the duke of Ormond 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 François 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 Avignon,——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.

Before I go further, let me get rid of my remark upon Avignon, 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
Avignon,——that he should therefore say, “Avignon is more subject to
high winds than any town in all France:” 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 Avignon 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 Avignon——so that there is
scarce any talking to them on a windy day.

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——

——But Monsieur le Marquis had walked in——

C H A P. XXIII

I HAD now the whole south of France, from the banks of the Rhône to
those of the Garonne, to traverse upon my mule at my own leisure—at
my own leisure——for I had left Death, the Lord knows——and He only—how
far behind me——“I have followed many a man thro’ France, 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?

So notwithstanding all the commissary of the post-office had said, I
changed the mode 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
Languedoc upon his back, as slowly as foot could fall.

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.

—This is most terrible work; judge if I don’t manage my plains better.

C H A P. XXIV

I HAD not gone above two leagues and a half, before the man with his
gun began to look at his priming.

I had three several times loiter’d terribly behind; half a mile at
least every time; once, in deep conference with a drum-maker, who was
making drums for the fairs of Baucaira and Tarascone—I did not
understand the principles——

The second time, I cannot so properly say, I stopp’d——for meeting a
couple of Franciscans 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——

The third, was an affair of trade with a gossip, for a hand-basket of
Provence 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——

—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——

——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 Toby’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

PLAIN STORIES.

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
plain into a city—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 Pall-Mall, or St.
James’s-Street, for a month together, with fewer adventures—and seen
less of human nature.

O! there is that sprightly frankness, which at once unpins every plait
of a Languedocian’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.

’Twas in the road betwixt Nismes and Lunel, where there is the best
Muscatto wine in all France, and which by the bye belongs to the
honest canons of MONTPELLIER—and foul befal the man who has drunk it at
their table, who grudges them a drop of it.

——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 Boogar, and all the saints at the
backside of the door of purgatory, said he—(making the same resolution
with the abbesse of Andoüillets) 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.

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.

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.

Hadst thou, Nannette, been array’d like a duchesse!

——But that cursed slit in thy petticoat!

Nannette cared not for it.

We could not have done without you, said she, letting go one hand, with
self-taught politeness, leading me up with the other.

A lame youth, whom Apollo 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
Nannette, 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.

The youth struck the note upon the tabourin—his pipe followed, and off
we bounded——“the duce take that slit!”

The sister of the youth, who had stolen her voice from heaven, sung
alternately with her brother——’twas a Gascoigne roundelay.

VIVA LA JOIA!

FIDON LA TRISTESSA!

The nymphs join’d in unison, and their swains an octave below them——

I would have given a crown to have it sew’d up—Nannette would not
have given a sous—Viva la joia! was in her lips—Viva la joia! 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 Lunel to Montpellier——from thence to Pesçnas,
Beziers——I danced it along through Narbonne, Carcasson, and Castle
Naudairy, till at last I danced myself into Perdrillo’s pavillion,
where pulling out a paper of black lines, that I might go on straight
forwards, without digression or parenthesis, in my uncle Toby’s
amours——

I begun thus——

C H A P. XXV

——BUT 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 straight lines[37] 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 Freeze-land,
Fog-land, and some other lands I wot of—it may be done——

But in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where every
idea, sensible and insensible, gets vent—in this land, my dear
Eugenius—in this fertile land of chivalry and romance, where I now
sit, unskrewing my ink-horn to write my uncle Toby’s amours, and with
all the meanders of JULIA’s track in quest of her DIEGO, in full view
of my study window—if thou comest not and takest me by the hand——

What a work it is likely to turn out!

Let us begin it.

 [37] Vid. Vol. III. p. 243.

C H A P. XXVI

IT is with LOVE as with CUCKOLDOM——

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 COMPARISON
may be imparted to him any hour in the day)——I’ll just mention it, and
begin in good earnest.

The thing is this.

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.

’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.

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——

I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought which heaven
intended for another man.

Pope and his Portrait[38] 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

Zeal or Anger——or

Anger or Zeal——

And till gods and men agree together to call it by the same name——the
errantest TARTUFFE, 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.

 [38] Vid. Pope’s Portrait.

C H A P. XXVII

——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.

——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 Dinah’s old black velvet mask! I think there is no
occasion for it.

Now this being a little bald about the chin, by frequently putting off
and on, before she was got with child by the coachman—not one of our
family would wear it after. To cover the MASK 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——

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 Welch judge, some three or four aldermen, and a single
mountebank——

In the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen alchymists.

C H A P. XXVIII

“IT is with Love as with Cuckoldom”——the suffering party is at least
the third, 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 Love—may be Hatred, in that——Sentiment half a
yard higher——and Nonsense———no, Madam,—not there——I mean at the part
I am now pointing to with my forefinger——how can we help ourselves?

Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever
soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle Toby 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 Bridget’s
pre-notification of them to Susannah, and Susannah’s repeated
manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle
Toby to look into the affair.

C H A P. XXIX

WHY weavers, gardeners, and gladiators—or a man with a pined leg
(proceeding from some ailment in the foot)—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.

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 Jenny’s—”

——The proposition does not strike one; on the contrary, it seems to run
opposite to the natural workings of causes and effects——

But it shews the weakness and imbecility of human reason.

——“And in perfect good health with it?”

—The most perfect,—Madam, that friendship herself could wish me——

“And drink nothing!—nothing but water?”

—Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of
the brain——see how they give way!——

In swims CURIOSITY, beckoning to her damsels to follow—they dive into
the center of the current——

FANCY sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the
stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bow-sprits——And
DESIRE, with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as
they swim by her, with the other——

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——

If I was you, quoth Yorick, I would drink more water, Eugenius—And,
if I was you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I.

Which shews they had both read Longinus—

For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as
long as I live.

C H A P. XXX

I WISH my uncle Toby had been a water-drinker; for then the thing had
been accounted for, That the first moment Widow Wadman saw him, she
felt something stirring within her in his favour—Something!—something.

—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——

But the truth is, my uncle Toby 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
Toby drank it for quietness sake.

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 Toby 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 Toby’s leg——but that will avail us little
in the present hypothesis, unless it had proceeded from some ailment
in the foot—whereas his leg was not emaciated from any disorder in
his foot—for my uncle Toby’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.

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,
Tristram, not sufficient, but thou must entangle thyself still more?

Is it not enough that thou art in debt, and that thou hast ten
cart-loads of thy fifth and sixth volumes[39] still—still unsold, and
art almost at thy wit’s ends, how to get them off thy hands?

To this hour art thou not tormented with the vile asthma that thou
gattest in skating against the wind in Flanders? 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?——

 [39] Alluding to the first edition.

C H A P. XXXI

—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—

—I beg we may take more care.

C H A P. XXXII

MY uncle Toby 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—

—It was a bed to lie on: so that as Shandy-Hall was at that time
unfurnished; and the little inn where poor Le Fever died, not yet
built; my uncle Toby was constrained to accept of a bed at Mrs.
Wadman’s, for a night or two, till corporal Trim (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 Toby’s house.

A daughter of Eve, for such was widow Wadman, and ’tis all the
character I intend to give of her—

—“ That she was a perfect woman—” 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.

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——

—And then good night.

But this is not matter of SYSTEM; for I have delivered that above——nor
is it matter of BREVIARY——for I make no man’s creed but my own——nor
matter of FACT——at least that I know of; but ’tis matter copulative and
introductory to what follows.

C H A P. XXXIII

I DO 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?

Widow Wadman’s night-shifts (as was the mode I suppose in King
William’s and Queen Anne’s reigns) were cut however after this
fashion; and if the fashion is changed (for in Italy they are come to
nothing)——so much the worse for the public; they were two Flemish
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.

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. Wadman was put to bed, and had got her legs stretched down to
the bottom of it, of which she always gave Bridget notice—Bridget,
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.

This was constant, and without any other variation than this; that on
shivering and tempestuous nights, when Bridget 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 etiquette was sacred, and might have vied with the most
mechanical one of the most inflexible bed-chamber in Christendom.

The first night, as soon as the corporal had conducted my uncle Toby
up stairs, which was about ten——Mrs. Wadman 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.

The second night she went to her bureau, and having ordered Bridget
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
Toby’s stay) when Bridget had pull’d down the night-shift, and was
assaying to stick in the corking pin——

——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 etiquette which hung
upon it, down——down it fell to the ground, and was shiver’d into a
thousand atoms.

From all which it was plain that widow Wadman was in love with my
uncle Toby.

C H A P. XXXIV

MY uncle Toby’s head at that time was full of other matters, so that
it was not till the demolition of Dunkirk, when all the other
civilities of Europe were settled, that he found leisure to return
this.

This made an armistice (that is, speaking with regard to my uncle
Toby—but with respect to Mrs. Wadman, 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 Toby with Mrs.
Wadman, rather than the amours of Mrs. Wadman with my uncle Toby.

This is not a distinction without a difference.

It is not like the affair of an old hat cock’d——and a cock’d old hat,
about which your reverences have so often been at odds with one
another——but there is a difference here in the nature of things——

And let me tell you, gentry, a wide one too.

C H A P. XXXV

NOW as widow Wadman did love my uncle Toby——and my uncle Toby did
not love widow Wadman, there was nothing for widow Wadman to do,
but to go on and love my uncle Toby——or let it alone.

Widow Wadman would do neither the one or the other.

——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——

——Curse on her! and so I send her to Tartary, and from Tartary to
Terra del Fuogo, and so on to the devil: in short, there is not an
infernal nitch where I do not take her divinityship and stick it.

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——

Brightest of stars! thou wilt shed thy influence upon some one——

——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!

——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.)

——No; I shall never have a finger in the pye (so here I break my
metaphor)——

Crust and Crumb

Inside and out

Top and bottom——I detest it, I hate it, I repudiate it——I’m sick at the
sight of it——

’Tis all pepper,
     garlick,
     speak-punctuation:,
     salt, and
     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——

——O Tristram! Tristram! cried Jenny.

O Jenny! Jenny! replied I, and so went on with the thirty-sixth
chapter.

C H A P. XXXVI

——“Not touch it for the world,” did I say——

Lord, how I have heated my imagination with this metaphor!

C H A P. XXXVII

WHICH shews, let your reverences and worships say what you will of it
(for as for thinking——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

A gitating

B ewitching

C onfounded

D evilish affairs of life——the most

E xtravagant

F utilitous

G alligaskinish

H andy-dandyish

I racundulous (there is no K to it) and

L yrical of all human passions: at the

same time, the most

M isgiving

N innyhammering

O bstipating

P ragmatical

S tridulous

R 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 Toby upon the
close of a long dissertation upon the subject——“You can scarce,” said
he, “combine two ideas together upon it, brother Toby, without an
hypallage”——What’s that? cried my uncle Toby.

The cart before the horse, replied my father——

——And what is he to do there? cried my uncle Toby.

Nothing, quoth my father, but to get in——or let it alone.

Now widow Wadman, as I told you before, would do neither the one or
the other.

She stood however ready harnessed and caparisoned at all points, to
watch accidents.

C H A P. XXXVIII

THE Fates, who certainly all fore-knew of these amours of widow
Wadman and my uncle Toby, 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 Toby to have
dwelt in any other house in the world, or to have occupied any other
garden in Christendom, but the very house and garden which join’d and
laid parallel to Mrs. Wadman’s; this, with the advantage of a
thickset arbour in Mrs. Wadman’s garden, but planted in the hedge-row
of my uncle Toby’s, put all the occasions into her hands which
Love-militancy wanted; she could observe my uncle Toby’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
Bridget, 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 Toby up in the very sentry-box itself.

C H A P. XXXIX

IT 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.

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——

——I beseech you, doctor Slop, quoth my uncle Toby, interrupting him
as he mentioned the blind gut, in a discourse with my father the
night my mother was brought to bed of me——I beseech you, quoth my uncle
Toby, 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.

The blind gut, answered doctor Slop, lies betwixt the Ilion and
Colon——

In a man? said my father.

——’Tis precisely the same, cried doctor Slop, in a woman.——

That’s more than I know; quoth my father.

C H A P. XL

——And so to make sure of both systems, Mrs. Wadman predetermined to
light my uncle Toby neither at this end or that; but, like a
prodigal’s candle, to light him, if possible, at both ends at once.

Now, through all the lumber rooms of military furniture, including both
of horse and foot, from the great arsenal of Venice to the Tower of
London (exclusive), if Mrs. Wadman had been rummaging for seven
years together, and with Bridget to help her, she could not have
found any one blind or mantelet so fit for her purpose, as that
which the expediency of my uncle Toby’s affairs had fix’d up ready to
her hands.

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 Toby 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.
Wadman 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 Toby’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.

When the attack was advanced to this point;——the world will naturally
enter into the reasons of Mrs. Wadman’s next stroke of
generalship——which was, to take my uncle Toby’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 Toby (poor
soul!) had well march’d above half a dozen toises with it.

—It obliged my uncle Toby to make use of his forefinger.

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 Toby’s tobacco-pipe, she might have travelled with it,
along the lines, from Dan to Beersheba, had my uncle Toby’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.

Whereas, in following my uncle Toby’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.

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 Toby, in the
simplicity of his soul, would lay his hand flat upon it, in order to go
on with his explanation; and Mrs. Wadman, 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——

By bringing up her forefinger parallel (as before) to my uncle
Toby’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 Toby! was never now in ’ts right
place——Mrs. Wadman 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.

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 Toby
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?——

——The duce take it! said my uncle Toby.

C H A P. XLI

THESE attacks of Mrs. Wadman, 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
Bouchain 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. Wadman’s; for the opposite side of the margin, which I suppose
to have been my uncle Toby’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——

By all that is priestly! I value this precious relick, with its
stigmata and pricks, more than all the relicks of the Romish
church——always excepting, when I am writing upon these matters, the
pricks which entered the flesh of St. Radagunda in the desert, which
in your road from FESSE to CLUNY, the nuns of that name will shew you
for love.

C H A P. XLII

I THINK, an’ please your honour, quoth Trim, the fortifications are
quite destroyed——and the bason is upon a level with the mole——I think
so too; replied my uncle Toby with a sigh half suppress’d——but step
into the parlour, Trim, for the stipulation——it lies upon the table.

It has lain there these six weeks, replied the corporal, till this very
morning that the old woman kindled the fire with it—

——Then, said my uncle Toby, 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.

——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 Toby’s feet and began as
follows.

C H A P. XLIII

IT 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——

A soldier, cried my uncle Toby, interrupting the corporal, is no more
exempt from saying a foolish thing, Trim, than a man of letters——But
not so often, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal——my uncle
Toby gave a nod.

It was a thousand pities then, said the corporal, casting his eye upon
Dunkirk, and the mole, as Servius Sulpicius, in returning out of
Asia (when he sailed from Ægina towards Megara), did upon
Corinth and Pyreus——

—“It was a thousand pities, an’ please your honour, to destroy these
works——and a thousand pities to have let them stood.”——

——Thou art right, Trim, in both cases; said my uncle Toby.——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——

——Thou hast many excellencies, Trim, said my uncle Toby, 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——

——Because, an’ please your honour, except one of a King of Bohemia and
his seven castles,—they are all true; for they are about myself——

I do not like the subject the worse, Trim, said my uncle Toby, on
that score: But prithee what is this story? thou hast excited my
curiosity.

I’ll tell it your honour, quoth the corporal, directly—Provided, said
my uncle Toby, looking earnestly towards Dunkirk and the mole
again——provided it is not a merry one; to such, Trim, 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, Trim, 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 Toby——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 Toby; so prithee begin it, Trim.

The corporal made his reverence; and though it is not so easy a matter
as the world imagines, to pull off a lank Montero-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.

THE STORY OF THE
KING OF BOHEMIA AND
HIS SEVEN CASTLES

THERE was a certain king of Bo - - he——

As the corporal was entering the confines of Bohemia, my uncle Toby
obliged him to halt for a single moment; he had set out bare-headed,
having, since he pull’d off his Montero-cap in the latter end of the
last chapter, left it lying beside him on the ground.

——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
Toby twice touch’d his Montero-cap with the end of his cane,
interrogatively——as much as to say, Why don’t you put it on, Trim?
Trim 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.

——’Tis every word of it but too true, cried my uncle Toby, that thou
art about to observe——

“Nothing in this world, Trim, is made to last for ever.”

——But when tokens, dear Tom, of thy love and remembrance wear out,
said Trim, what shall we say?

There is no occasion, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, to say any thing
else; and was a man to puzzle his brains till Doom’s day, I believe,
Trim, it would be impossible.

The corporal, perceiving my uncle Toby 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 Bohemia and his seven castles.

THE STORY OF THE
KING OF BOHEMIA AND
HIS SEVEN CASTLES,
CONTINUED

THERE was a certain king of Bohemia, but in whose reign, except his
own, I am not able to inform your honour——

I do not desire it of thee, Trim, by any means, cried my uncle
Toby.

——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—

I would not give a halfpenny to know, said my uncle Toby.

——Only, an’ please your honour, it makes a story look the better in the
face——

——’Tis thy own, Trim, so ornament it after thy own fashion; and take
any date, continued my uncle Toby, looking pleasantly upon him—take
any date in the whole world thou chusest, and put it to—thou art
heartily welcome——

The corporal bowed; for of every century, and of every year of that
century, from the first creation of the world down to Noah’s flood;
and from Noah’s flood to the birth of Abraham; through all the
pilgrimages of the patriarchs, to the departure of the Israelites out
of Egypt——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 Toby subjected this
vast empire of time and all its abysses at his feet; but as MODESTY
scarce touches with a finger what LIBERALITY offers her with both hands
open—the corporal contented himself with the very worst year 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——

——It was the year next him——which being the year of our Lord seventeen
hundred and twelve, when the Duke of Ormond was playing the devil in
Flanders——the corporal took it, and set out with it afresh on his
expedition to Bohemia.

THE STORY OF THE
KING OF BOHEMIA AND
HIS SEVEN CASTLES,
CONTINUED

IN the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twelve, there
was, an’ please your honour——

—To tell thee truly, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, 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 Quesnoi, though Fagel was carrying on the works
with such incredible vigour—but likewise on the score, Trim, 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——

There is but one, an’ please your honour——

——’Tis as bad as twenty, replied my uncle Toby——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——

——If I live, an’ please your honour, but once to get through it, I will
never tell it again, quoth Trim, either to man, woman, or
child——Poo—poo! said my uncle Toby—but with accents of such sweet
encouragement did he utter it, that the corporal went on with his story
with more alacrity than ever.

THE STORY OF THE
KING OF BOHEMIA AND
HIS SEVEN CASTLES,
CONTINUED

THERE 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 Bohemia——

——Leave out the date entirely, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby, leaning
forwards, and laying his hand gently upon the corporal’s shoulder to
temper the interruption—leave it out entirely, Trim; a story passes
very well without these niceties, unless one is pretty sure of
’em——Sure of ’em! said the corporal, shaking his head——

Right; answered my uncle Toby, it is not easy, Trim, 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 Toby’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 geography?

——Thou would’st have said chronology, Trim, said my uncle Toby; 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, Trim, 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.

Is it else to be conceived, corporal, continued my uncle Toby, rising
up in his sentry-box, as he began to warm in this part of his
discourse—how Marlborough could have marched his army from the banks
of the Maes to Belburg; from Belburg to Kerpenord—(here the
corporal could sit no longer) from Kerpenord, Trim, to Kalsaken;
from Kalsaken to Newdorf; from Newdorf to Landenbourg; from
Landenbourg to Mildenheim; from Mildenheim to Elchingen; from
Elchingen to Gingen; from Gingen to Balmerchoffen; from
Balmerchoffen to Skellenburg, where he broke in upon the enemy’s
works; forced his passage over the Danube; cross’d the Lech—push’d
on his troops into the heart of the empire, marching at the head of
them through Fribourg, Hokenwert, and Schonevelt, to the plains of
Blenheim and Hochstet?——Great as he was, corporal, he could not
have advanced a step, or made one single day’s march without the aids
of Geography.——As for Chronology, I own, Trim, continued my uncle
Toby, 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.

I am far from controverting, continued my uncle Toby, what historians
agree in, that in the year of our Lord 1380, under the reign of
Wencelaus, son of Charles the Fourth——a certain priest, whose name
was Schwartz, shew’d the use of powder to the Venetians, in their
wars against the Genoese; but ’tis certain he was not the first;
because if we are to believe Don Pedro, the bishop of Leon—How came
priests and bishops, an’ please your honour, to trouble their heads so
much about gun-powder? God knows, said my uncle Toby——his providence
brings good out of every thing—and he avers, in his chronicle of King
Alphonsus, who reduced Toledo, 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 Spain and Barbary—And all the world knows, that
Friar Bacon 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 Schwartz was born—And that the Chinese, added my uncle
Toby, embarrass us, and all accounts of it, still more, by boasting
of the invention some hundreds of years even before him——

They are a pack of liars, I believe, cried Trim——

——They are somehow or other deceived, said my uncle Toby, 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 Trim.

My uncle Toby, tho’ in the utmost distress for a comparison, most
courteously refused Trim’s offer—till Trim telling him, he had half
a dozen more in Bohemia, which he knew not how to get off his
hands——my uncle Toby 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 Bohemia and his seven castles.

THE STORY OF THE
KING OF BOHEMIA AND
HIS SEVEN CASTLES,
CONTINUED

THIS unfortunate King of Bohemia, said Trim,——Was he unfortunate,
then? cried my uncle Toby, 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 unfortunate, then, Trim? said my uncle Toby,
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 Bohemia’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
Toby’s face for assistance——but seeing it was the very thing my uncle
Toby sat in expectation of himself——after a hum and a haw, he went
on——

The King of Bohemia, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal,
was unfortunate, as thus——That taking great pleasure and delight in
navigation and all sort of sea affairs——and there happening
throughout the whole kingdom of Bohemia, to be no sea-port town
whatever——

How the duce should there—Trim? cried my uncle Toby; for Bohemia
being totally inland, it could have happen’d no otherwise——It might,
said Trim, if it had pleased God——

My uncle Toby never spoke of the being and natural attributes of God,
but with diffidence and hesitation——

——I believe not, replied my uncle Toby, after some pause—for being
inland, as I said, and having Silesia and Moravia to the east;
Lusatia and Upper Saxony to the north; Franconia to the west; and
Bavaria to the south; Bohemia could not have been propell’d to the
sea without ceasing to be Bohemia——nor could the sea, on the other
hand, have come up to Bohemia, without overflowing a great part of
Germany, and destroying millions of unfortunate inhabitants who could
make no defence against it——Scandalous! cried Trim—Which would
bespeak, added my uncle Toby, mildly, such a want of compassion in
him who is the father of it——that, I think, Trim——the thing could
have happen’d no way.

The corporal made the bow of unfeign’d conviction; and went on.

Now the King of Bohemia with his queen and courtiers happening one
fine summer’s evening to walk out——Aye! there the word happening is
right, Trim, cried my uncle Toby; for the King of Bohemia 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.

King William was of an opinion, an’ please your honour, quoth Trim,
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 Toby——And I believe, continued
Trim, to this day, that the shot which disabled me at the battle of
Landen, 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, Trim, be
construed otherwise, said my uncle Toby.

The heart, both of the master and the man, were alike subject to sudden
over-flowings;——a short silence ensued.

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——

So, thou wast once in love, Trim! said my uncle Toby, smiling——

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 Toby:——I dare say, answered Trim, that
every drummer and serjeant’s son in the regiment knew of it——It’s high
time I should——said my uncle Toby.

Your honour remembers with concern, said the corporal, the total rout
and confusion of our camp and army at the affair of Landen; every one
was left to shift for himself; and if it had not been for the regiments
of Wyndham, Lumley, and Galway, which covered the retreat over the
bridge Neerspeeken, the king himself could scarce have gained it——he
was press’d hard, as your honour knows, on every side of him——

Gallant mortal! cried my uncle Toby, 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 English horse along with
him to support the right, and tear the laurel from Luxembourg’s
brows, if yet ’tis possible——I see him with the knot of his scarfe just
shot off, infusing fresh spirits into poor Galway’s regiment—riding
along the line—then wheeling about, and charging Conti at the head of
it——Brave, brave, by heaven! cried my uncle Toby—he deserves a
crown——As richly, as a thief a halter; shouted Trim.

My uncle Toby 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.

As the number of wounded was prodigious, and no one had time to think
of any thing but his own safety—Though Talmash, said my uncle Toby,
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
Toby—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.

There is no part of the body, an’ please your honour, where a wound
occasions more intolerable anguish than upon the knee——

Except the groin; said my uncle Toby. 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.

It is for that reason, quoth my uncle Toby, 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 * * *——

Mrs. Wadman, 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——

The dispute was maintained with amicable and equal force betwixt my
uncle Toby and Trim for some time; till Trim 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 Toby would not allow——’Tis a proof of nothing, Trim, said he,
but the generosity of thy temper——

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

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.

C H A P. XLIV

THE 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 Toby)——all together, an’ please your honour, was more
than I could sustain.

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.

I thought love had been a joyous thing, quoth my uncle Toby.

’Tis the most serious thing, an’ please your honour (sometimes), that
is in the world.

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.

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 Tom (here Trim wip’d his eyes) had sent me as a token,
by a recruit, just before he set out for Lisbon——

——I never told your honour that piteous story yet——here Trim wiped
his eyes a third time.

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.

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.

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 Flanders, which they let go loose——By thy description,
Trim, said my uncle Toby, I dare say she was a young Beguine, of
which there are none to be found any where but in the Spanish
Netherlands—except at Amsterdam——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.

——She often told me, quoth Trim, she did it for the love of Christ—I
did not like it.——I believe, Trim, we are both wrong, said my uncle
Toby—we’ll ask Mr. Yorick about it to-night at my brother
Shandy’s——so put me in mind; added my uncle Toby.

The young Beguine, 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 Beguine, 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)——

——“It was not love”——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.

That was very odd, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby.

I think so too—said Mrs. Wadman.

It never did, said the corporal.

C H A P. XLV

——But ’tis no marvel, continued the corporal—seeing my uncle Toby
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’Saturday night,—may nevertheless be shot through his heart on
Sunday morning——It happened so here, an’ please your honour, with
this difference only—that it was on Sunday 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.”

I thought, Trim, said my uncle Toby, a man never fell in love so
very suddenly.

Yes, an’ please your honour, if he is in the way of it——replied Trim.

I prithee, quoth my uncle Toby, inform me how this matter happened.

——With all pleasure, said the corporal, making a bow.

C H A P. XLVI

I HAD 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.

It was on a Sunday, in the afternoon, as I told your honour.

The old man and his wife had walked out——

Every thing was still and hush as midnight about the house——

There was not so much as a duck or a duckling about the yard——

——When the fair Beguine came in to see me.

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.

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 Beguine; 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.

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——

——Not in that place, said my uncle Toby——

Though it was the most serious despair in nature to the corporal—he
could not forbear smiling.

The young Beguine, 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——

——Prithee, Trim, commend it as much as thou wilt, said my uncle
Toby; I shall hear thy story with the more delight——The corporal
thank’d his master most unfeignedly; but having nothing to say upon the
Beguine’s hand but the same over again——he proceeded to the effects
of it.

The fair Beguine, 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.

I perceiv’d, then, I was beginning to be in love——

As she continued rub-rub-rubbing—I felt it spread from under her hand,
an’ please your honour, to every part of my frame——

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——

——And then thou clapped’st it to thy lips, Trim, said my uncle
Toby——and madest a speech.

Whether the corporal’s amour terminated precisely in the way my uncle
Toby 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.

C H A P. XLVII

AS soon as the corporal had finished the story of his amour—or rather
my uncle Toby for him—Mrs. Wadman silently sallied forth from her
arbour, replaced the pin in her mob, pass’d the wicker gate, and
advanced slowly towards my uncle Toby’s sentry-box: the disposition
which Trim had made in my uncle Toby’s mind, was too favourable a
crisis to be let slipp’d——

——The attack was determin’d upon: it was facilitated still more by my
uncle Toby’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 Dunkirk stood—The
corporal had march’d—the field was clear.

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 Gotham)—it was certainly the PLAN of Mrs. Wadman’s
attack of my uncle Toby in his sentry-box, BY PLAN——Now the plan
hanging up in it at this juncture, being the Plan of Dunkirk—and the
tale of Dunkirk 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 Beguine’s, in Trim’s story—that just then, that
particular attack, however successful before—became the most heartless
attack that could be made——

O! let woman alone for this. Mrs. Wadman had scarce open’d the
wicker-gate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances.

——She formed a new attack in a moment.

C H A P. XLVIII

——I am half distracted, captain Shandy, said Mrs. Wadman, holding
up her cambrick handkerchief to her left eye, as she approach’d the
door of my uncle Toby’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—

In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle
Toby, 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.

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.

——If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that
nature——I’ve nothing to say to it——

My uncle Toby never did: and I will answer for him, that he would
have sat quietly upon a sofa from June to January (which, you know,
takes in both the hot and cold months), with an eye as fine as the
Thracian[40] Rodope’s besides him, without being able to tell,
whether it was a black or blue one.

The difficulty was to get my uncle Toby, to look at one at all.

’Tis surmounted.   And

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 Galileo look’d for a spot
in the sun.

——In vain! for by all the powers which animate the organ——Widow
Wadman’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——

——If thou lookest, uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment
longer,——thou art undone.

 [40] Rodope Thracia tam inevitabili fascino instructa, tam exactè
 oculus intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis incidisset, fieri non
 posset, quin caperetur.——I know not who.

C H A P. XLIX

AN 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. Wadman’s eyes (except once
in the next period), that you keep it in your fancy.

I protest, Madam, said my uncle Toby, I can see nothing whatever in
your eye.

It is not in the white; said Mrs Wadman: my uncle Toby look’d with
might and main into the pupil——

Now of all the eyes which ever were created——from your own, Madam, up
to those of Venus 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 Toby 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 Toby 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 Shandy, and
alone, without a bosom to lean your head on——or trust your cares to?”

It was an eye——

But I shall be in love with it myself, if I say another word about it.

——It did my uncle Toby’s business.

C H A P. L

THERE is nothing shews the character of my father and my uncle Toby,
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 Toby’s have been, when ’twas all benignity
without it.

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:

“A Devil ’tis——and mischief such doth work
As never yet did Pagan, Jew, or Turk.”[41]

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 Ernulphus——he was too impetuous; nor with
Ernulphus’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.

My uncle Toby, 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.

He took it like a lamb——I say.

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;[42] which
said wood being in full view of my uncle Toby’s house, and of
singular service to him in his description of the battle of
Wynnendale—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 Toby——the first shootings of which (as my uncle Toby
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
Toby was presently convinced, that his wound was not a skin-deep
wound——but that it had gone to his heart.

 [41] This will be printed with my father’s Life of Socrates, &c. &c.

 [42] Mr Shandy must mean the poor in spirit; inasmuch as they
 divided the money amongst themselves.

C H A P. LI

THE world is ashamed of being virtuous——my uncle Toby knew little of
the world; and therefore when he felt he was in love with widow
Wadman, he had no conception that the thing was any more to be made a
mystery of, than if Mrs. Wadman had given him a cut with a gap’d
knife across his finger: Had it been otherwise——yet as he ever look’d
upon Trim 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.

“I am in love, corporal!” quoth my uncle Toby.

C H A P. LII

IN 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
Bohemia—Bohemia! said my uncle Toby - - - - musing a long time - -
- What became of that story, Trim?

—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. Wadman, quoth my uncle Toby——She
has left a ball here—added my uncle Toby—pointing to his breast——

——She can no more, an’ please your honour, stand a siege, than she can
fly—cried the corporal——

——But as we are neighbours, Trim,—the best way I think is to let her
know it civilly first—quoth my uncle Toby.

Now if I might presume, said the corporal, to differ from your honour——

—Why else do I talk to thee, Trim? said my uncle Toby, mildly——

—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, Trim,
said my uncle Toby—than the child unborn——

Precious souls!——

Mrs. Wadman had told it, with all its circumstances, to Mrs.
Bridget 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 Te Deum.

I am terribly afraid, said widow Wadman, in case I should marry him,
Bridget—that the poor captain will not enjoy his health, with the
monstrous wound upon his groin——

It may not, Madam, be so very large, replied Bridget, as you
think——and I believe, besides, added she—that ’tis dried up——

——I could like to know—merely for his sake, said Mrs. Wadman——

—We’ll know and long and the broad of it, in ten days—answered Mrs.
Bridget, for whilst the captain is paying his addresses to you—I’m
confident Mr. Trim will be for making love to me—and I’ll let him as
much as he will—added Bridget—to get it all out of him——

The measures were taken at once——and my uncle Toby and the corporal
went on with theirs.

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——

——Thou wilt please me by it, Trim, said my uncle Toby,
exceedingly—and as I foresee thou must act in it as my aid de camp,
here’s a crown, corporal, to begin with, to steep thy commission.

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——

—I had better take the red plush ones, quoth my uncle Toby—They will
be too clumsy—said the corporal.

C H A P. LIII

——Thou wilt get a brush and a little chalk to my sword——’Twill be only
in your honour’s way, replied Trim.

C H A P. LIV

—But your honour’s two razors shall be new set—and I will get my
Montero cap furbish’d up, and put on poor lieutenant Le Fever’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. Wadman in the parlour, to the right——I’ll attack Mrs.
Bridget 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.

I wish I may but manage it right; said my uncle Toby—but I declare,
corporal, I had rather march up to the very edge of a trench——

—A woman is quite a different thing—said the corporal.

—I suppose so, quoth my uncle Toby.

C H A P. LV

IF any thing in this world, which my father said, could have provoked
my uncle Toby, during the time he was in love, it was the perverse
use my father was always making of an expression of Hilarion 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 ass (meaning his body) leave off
kicking.”

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 passions once—but ass 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.

I must here observe to you the difference betwixt

My father’s ass

and my hobby-horse—in order to keep characters as separate as may be,
in our fancies as we go along.

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 Toby’s
siege—or an any thing, 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——

——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.

C H A P. LVI

WELL! dear brother Toby, said my father, upon his first seeing him
after he fell in love—and how goes it with your ASSE?

Now my uncle Toby thinking more of the part where he had had the
blister, than of Hilarion’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 Slop, and Mr. Yorick, 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 Toby.

My A—e, quoth my uncle Toby, is much better—brother Shandy—My
father had formed great expectations from his Asse in this onset; and
would have brought him on again; but doctor Slop 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——

And so the discourse went on without him.

Every body, said my mother, says you are in love, brother Toby,—and
we hope it is true.

I am as much in love, sister, I believe, replied my uncle Toby, as
any man usually is——Humph! said my father——and when did you know it?
quoth my mother——

——When the blister broke; replied my uncle Toby.

My uncle Toby’s reply put my father into good temper—so he charg’d o’
foot.

C H A P. LVII

AS the ancients agree, brother Toby, 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.

What signifies it, brother Shandy, replied my uncle Toby, which of
the two it is, provided it will but make a man marry, and love his
wife, and get a few children?

——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
Slop’s—a few children! cried my father, repeating my uncle Toby’s
words as he walk’d to and fro——

——Not, my dear brother Toby, cried my father, recovering himself all
at once, and coming close up to the back of my uncle Toby’s chair—not
that I should be sorry hadst thou a score—on the contrary, I should
rejoice—and be as kind, Toby, to every one of them as a father—

My uncle Toby stole his hand unperceived behind his chair, to give my
father’s a squeeze——

——Nay, moreover, continued he, keeping hold of my uncle Toby’s
hand—so much dost thou possess, my dear Toby, 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 Asiatic
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
Toby, which these gymnics inordinately taken are apt to do—else, dear
Toby, I would procure thee the most beautiful woman in my empire, and
I would oblige thee, nolens, volens, to beget for me one subject
every month——

As my father pronounced the last word of the sentence—my mother took a
pinch of snuff.

Now I would not, quoth my uncle Toby, get a child, nolens, volens,
that is, whether I would or no, to please the greatest prince upon
earth——

——And ’twould be cruel in me, brother Toby, 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——

There is at least, said Yorick, a great deal of reason and plain
sense in captain Shandy’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——

I wish, Yorick, said my father, you had read Plato; for there you
would have learnt that there are two LOVES—I know there were two
RELIGIONS, replied Yorick, amongst the ancients——one—for the vulgar,
and another for the learned;—but I think ONE LOVE might have served
both of them very well—

I could not; replied my father—and for the same reasons: for of these
Loves, according to Ficinus’s comment upon Velasius, the one is
rational——

——the other is natural——
the first ancient——without mother——where Venus had nothing to do: the
second, begotten of Jupiter and Dione—

——Pray, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, 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——

This latter, continued he, partakes wholly of the nature of Venus.

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 desire, simply——

——I think the procreation of children as beneficial to the world, said
Yorick, as the finding out the longitude——

——To be sure, said my mother, love keeps peace in the world——

——In the house—my dear, I own—

——It replenishes the earth; said my mother——

But it keeps heaven empty—my dear; replied my father.

——’Tis Virginity, cried Slop, triumphantly, which fills paradise.

Well push’d nun! quoth my father.

C H A P. LVIII

MY 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.

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.

Yorick, for this reason, though he would often attack him—yet could
never bear to do it with all his force.

Doctor Slop’s VIRGINITY, 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 Christendom about Slop’s ears, when
corporal Trim came into the parlour to inform my uncle Toby, that
his thin scarlet breeches, in which the attack was to be made upon Mrs.
Wadman, 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 Wadman has been deeply in love
with my brother Toby 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——

——She has gained her point.

In this case, continued my father, which Plato, I am persuaded, never
thought of——Love, you see, is not so much a SENTIMENT as a SITUATION,
into which a man enters, as my brother Toby would do, into a
corps——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.

The hypothesis, like the rest of my father’s, was plausible enough, and
my uncle Toby had but a single word to object to it—in which Trim
stood ready to second him——but my father had not drawn his conclusion——

For this reason, continued my father (stating the case over
again)—notwithstanding all the world knows, that Mrs. Wadman affects
my brother Toby—and my brother Toby contrariwise affects Mrs.
Wadman, 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.

We have taken our measures badly, quoth my uncle Toby, looking up
interrogatively in Trim’s face.

I would lay my Montero-cap, said Trim——Now Trim’s Montero-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
Montero-cap to a shilling—was it proper, continued Trim (making a
bow), to offer a wager before your honours——

——There is nothing improper in it, said my father—’tis a mode of
expression; for in saying thou would’st lay thy Montero-cap to a
shilling—all thou meanest is this—that thou believest——

——Now, What do’st thou believe?

That widow Wadman, an’ please your worship, cannot hold it out ten
days——

And whence, cried Slop, jeeringly, hast thou all this knowledge of
woman, friend?

By falling in love with a popish clergy-woman; said Trim.

’Twas a Beguine, said my uncle Toby.

Doctor Slop 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 Beguines, a set of silly, fusty,
baggages——Slop could not stand it——and my uncle Toby having some
measures to take about his breeches—and Yorick 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 Toby the following letter of
instructions:

My dear brother Toby,

WHAT 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.

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 Shandy 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 Toby, of the manner in which it will be
accepted.

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.

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 Trim.

—’Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy.

Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim, Toby——

“That women are timid:” And ’tis well they are——else there would be
no dealing with them.

Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy thighs,
like the trunk-hose of our ancestors.

——A just medium prevents all conclusions.

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.

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 Rabelais, or Scarron, or
Don Quixote——

——They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear
Toby, that there is no passion so serious as lust.

Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her
parlour.

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 Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the
appetite by that means.

Avicenna, 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——

As for thy drink—I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of
VERVAIN and the herb HANEA, of which Ælian 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.

There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present——

——Unless the breaking out of a fresh war——So wishing every thing, dear
Toby, for best,

I rest thy affectionate brother,

WALTER SHANDY.

C H A P. LIX

WHILST my father was writing his letter of instructions, my uncle
Toby 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.

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 Toby’s——to
countenance him in this attack of his.

My uncle Toby 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[43] volume of such
a work as this.——My father had no time but to put the letter of
instructions into my uncle Toby’s coat-pocket——and join with my
mother in wishing his attack prosperous.

I could like, said my mother, to look through the key-hole out of
curiosity——Call it by its right name, my dear, quoth my father—

And look through the key-hole as long as you will.

 [43] Alluding to the first edition.

C H A P. LX

I CALL 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 Toby’s amours, till this very moment, that my
mother’s curiosity, 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.

“Call it, my dear, by its right name, quoth my father, and look through
the key-hole as long as you will.”

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.

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.

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 August 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.”

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.

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.

——which leads me to my uncle Toby’s amours.

C H A P. LXI

THOUGH the corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle
Toby’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 SPLEEN 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.

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 Toby’s,
assimilated every thing around it so sovereignly to itself, and Nature
had moreover wrote GENTLEMAN 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 Toby 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.

Nothing in this world could have co-operated more powerfully towards
this, than my uncle Toby’s blue and gold——had not Quantity in some
measure been necessary to Grace: in a period of fifteen or sixteen
years since they had been made, by a total inactivity in my uncle
Toby’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 William’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 Toby thought of attacking
in armour, nothing could have so well imposed upon his imagination.

As for the thin scarlet breeches, they had been unripp’d by the taylor
between the legs, and left at sixes and sevens——

——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 Toby’s wardrobe, he sallied forth in the red plush.

The corporal had array’d himself in poor Le Fever’s regimental coat;
and with his hair tuck’d up under his Montero-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 Toby carried his
cane like a pike.

——It looks well at least; quoth my father to himself.

C H A P. LXII

MY uncle Toby 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.”

Now my uncle Toby 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. Wadman, 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.——

——And suppose it is? my father would say.

C H A P. LXIII

SHE cannot, quoth my uncle Toby, halting, when they had march’d up to
within twenty paces of Mrs. Wadman’s door—she cannot, corporal, take
it amiss.——

——She will take it, an’ please your honour, said the corporal, just as
the Jew’s widow at Lisbon took it of my brother Tom.——

——And how was that? quoth my uncle Toby, facing quite about to the
corporal.

Your honour, replied the corporal, knows of Tom’s misfortunes; but
this affair has nothing to do with them any further than this, That if
Tom 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.

’Tis very true; said my uncle Toby, looking gravely at Mrs.
Wadman’s house, as he spoke.

Nothing, continued the corporal, can be so sad as confinement for
life—or so sweet, an’ please your honour, as liberty.

Nothing, Trim——said my uncle Toby, musing——

Whilst a man is free,—cried the corporal, giving a flourish with his
stick thus——

squiqqly line diagonally across the page

A thousand of my father’s most subtle syllogisms could not have said
more for celibacy.

My uncle Toby look’d earnestly towards his cottage and his
bowling-green.

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.

C H A P. LXIV

AS Tom’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 Jew 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——Tom
thought (as every body in Lisbon 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—Tom 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.

Every servant in the family, from high to low, wish’d Tom 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! Tom! thou smilest
no more, cried the corporal, looking on one side of him upon the
ground, as if he apostrophised him in his dungeon.

Poor fellow! said my uncle Toby, feelingly.

He was an honest, light-hearted lad, an’ please your honour, as ever
blood warm’d——

——Then he resembled thee, Trim, said my uncle Toby, rapidly.

The corporal blush’d down to his fingers ends—a tear of sentimental
bashfulness—another of gratitude to my uncle Toby—and a tear of
sorrow for his brother’s misfortunes, started into his eye, and ran
sweetly down his cheek together; my uncle Toby’s kindled as one lamp
does at another; and taking hold of the breast of Trim’s coat (which
had been that of Le Fever’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 Jew’s
widow.

C H A P. LXV

WHEN Tom, 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 Toby—she had suffered
persecution, Trim, and had learnt mercy——

——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 Trim; and
some dismal winter’s evening, when your honour is in the humour, they
shall be told you with the rest of Tom’s story, for it makes a part
of it——

Then do not forget, Trim, said my uncle Toby.

A negro has a soul? an’ please your honour, said the corporal
(doubtingly).

I am not much versed, corporal, quoth my uncle Toby, in things of
that kind; but I suppose, God would not leave him without one, any more
than thee or me——

——It would be putting one sadly over the head of another, quoth the
corporal.

It would so; said my uncle Toby. Why then, an’ please your honour, is
a black wench to be used worse than a white one?

I can give no reason, said my uncle Toby——

——Only, cried the corporal, shaking his head, because she has no one to
stand up for her——

——’Tis that very thing, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,——which
recommends her to protection——and her brethren with her; ’tis the
fortune of war which has put the whip into our hands now——where it
may be hereafter, heaven knows!——but be it where it will, the brave,
Trim! will not use it unkindly.

——God forbid, said the corporal.

Amen, responded my uncle Toby, laying his hand upon his heart.

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.

C H A P. LXVI

AS Tom, an’ please your honour, had no business at that time with the
Moorish girl, he passed on into the room beyond, to talk to the
Jew’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.

There is nothing so awkward, as courting a woman, an’ please your
honour, whilst she is making sausages——So Tom 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——

It was owing to the neglect of that very precaution, said my uncle
Toby, laying his hand upon Trim’s shoulder, that Count De la
Motte lost the battle of Wynendale: he pressed too speedily into the
wood; which if he had not done, Lisle had not fallen into our hands,
nor Ghent and Bruges, which both followed her example; it was so
late in the year, continued my uncle Toby, 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.——

——Why, therefore, may not battles, an’ please your honour, as well as
marriages, be made in heaven?—my uncle Toby mused——

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 Toby said nothing at all; and the
corporal finished his story.

As Tom 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.——

——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 Tom mentioned it.

She made a feint however of defending herself, by snatching up a
sausage:——Tom instantly laid hold of another——

But seeing Tom’s had more gristle in it——

She signed the capitulation——and Tom sealed it; and there was an end
of the matter.

C H A P. LXVII

ALL womankind, continued Trim, (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.——

——I like the comparison, said my uncle Toby, better than the thing
itself——

——Because your honour, quoth the corporal, loves glory, more than
pleasure.

I hope, Trim, answered my uncle Toby, 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 AMBITION, and intrench the lives and fortunes of
the few, from the plunderings of the many——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.

In pronouncing this, my uncle Toby 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.

——Now what can their two noddles be about? cried my father to my
mother——by all that’s strange, they are besieging Mrs. Wadman in
form, and are marching round her house to mark out the lines of
circumvallation.

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 Moses, or the Tale of a Tub, that
it may not swim down the gutter of Time along with them?

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 Jenny! 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.——

——Heaven have mercy upon us both!

C H A P. LXVIII

NOW, for what the world thinks of that ejaculation——I would not give a
groat.

C H A P. LXIX

MY 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
Slop was overthrown by Obadiah on the coach-horse: as this was
directly opposite to the front of Mrs. Wadman’s house, when my father
came to it, he gave a look across; and seeing my uncle Toby 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
Toby and his man Trim 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.

——It will not detain us half one; said my father.

The corporal was just then setting in with the story of his brother
Tom and the Jew’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——

——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.

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.

Curiosity governs the first moment; 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 HONOUR.

I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to
Patience; but that VIRTUE, methinks, has extent of dominion sufficient
of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled
castles which HONOUR has left him upon the earth.

My father stood it out as well as he could with these three auxiliaries
to the end of Trim’s story; and from thence to the end of my uncle
Toby’s panegyrick upon arms, in the chapter following it; when
seeing, that instead of marching up to Mrs. Wadman’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.

C H A P. LXX

——“Now what can their two noddles be about?” cried my father - - &c. -
- - -

I dare say, said my mother, they are making fortifications——

——Not on Mrs. Wadman’s premises! cried my father, stepping back——

I suppose not: quoth my mother.

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——

——They are foolish things——said my mother.

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.

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 cuvetts——

—“They are foolish things;” said my mother.

——Particularly the cuvetts; replied my father.

’Tis enough—he tasted the sweet of triumph—and went on.

—Not that they are, properly speaking, Mrs. Wadman’s premises, said
my father, partly correcting himself—because she is but tenant for
life——

——That makes a great difference—said my mother——

—In a fool’s head, replied my father——

Unless she should happen to have a child—said my mother——

——But she must persuade my brother Toby first to get her one—

To be sure, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother.

——Though if it comes to persuasion—said my father—Lord have mercy upon
them.

Amen: said my mother, piano.

Amen: cried my father, fortissimè.

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,
Yorick’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.

The first Lord of the Treasury thinking of ways and means, could not
have returned home with a more embarrassed look.

C H A P. LXXI

UPON 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.

The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of the
service: FANCY is capricious—WIT must not be searched for—and
PLEASANTRY (good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call,
was an empire to be laid at her feet.

——The best way for a man, is to say his prayers——

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.

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——

——I never could make them an inch the wider——

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——

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.

Now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which I have
found to answer so well as this——

——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.

——Which they certainly will, when they think as little.

C H A P. LXXII

NOW in ordinary cases, that is, when I am only stupid, and the thoughts
rise heavily and pass gummous through my pen——

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 for my soul;
so must be obliged to go on writing like a Dutch commentator to the
end of the chapter, unless something be done—

——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.

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.——

——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 Homer 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.

Ludovicus Sorbonensis 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.

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.

——But their honours and reverences had not seen my bills.

C H A P. LXXIII

AS 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——

Or my chapter of Pishes, which should follow them——

Or my chapter of Knots, 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.

And first, it may be said, there is a pelting kind of thersitical
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
Grecian army, for suffering the name of so ugly and foul-mouth’d a
man as Thersites 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.

To this, I have no other answer——at least ready——but that the
Archbishop of Benevento wrote his nasty Romance of the Galatea,
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 Revelations, 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 Investment.

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 England, or of France, must e’en go without it——

As for the Spanish ladies——I am in no sort of distress——

C H A P. LXXIV

THE 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!”

For in talking of my digression——I declare before heaven I have made
it! What a strange creature is mortal man! said she.

’Tis very true, said I——but ’twere better to get all these things out
of our heads, and return to my uncle Toby.

C H A P. LXXV

WHEN my uncle Toby 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. Wadman’s door.

I warrant your honour; said the corporal, touching his Montero-cap
with his hand, as he passed him in order to give a knock at the
door——My uncle Toby, 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 Toby’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.
Bridget stood perdue within, with her finger and her thumb upon the
latch, benumb’d with expectation; and Mrs Wadman, with an eye ready
to be deflowered again, sat breathless behind the window-curtain of her
bed-chamber, watching their approach.

Trim! said my uncle Toby——but as he articulated the word, the
minute expired, and Trim let fall the rapper.

My uncle Toby perceiving that all hopes of a conference were knock’d
on the head by it——whistled Lillabullero.

C H A P. LXXVI

AS Mrs. Bridget’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——

——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 Rousseau, 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.

True philosophy——but there is no treating the subject whilst my uncle
is whistling Lillabullero.

——Let us go into the house.

C H A P. LXXVII

C H A P. LXXVIII

C H A P. LXXIX

—— * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
*.——

——You shall see the very place, Madam; said my uncle Toby.

Mrs. Wadman 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——

“L—d! I cannot look at it——

What would the world say if I look’d at it?

I should drop down, if I look’d at it—

I wish I could look at it—

There can be no sin in looking at it.

——I will look at it.”

Whilst all this was running through Mrs. Wadman’s imagination, my
uncle Toby had risen from the sopha, and got to the other side of the
parlour door, to give Trim an order about it in the passage——

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *——I believe it is in the garret, said my
uncle Toby——I saw it there, an’ please your honour, this morning,
answered Trim——Then prithee, step directly for it, Trim, said my
uncle Toby, and bring it into the parlour.

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 Montero-cap, and went as fast as his lame knee would let him. My
uncle Toby returned into the parlour, and sat himself down again upon
the sopha.

——You shall lay your finger upon the place—said my uncle Toby.——I
will not touch it, however, quoth Mrs. Wadman to herself.

This requires a second translation:—it shews what little knowledge is
got by mere words—we must go up to the first springs.

Now in order to clear up the mist which hangs upon these three pages, I
must endeavour to be as clear as possible myself.

Rub your hands thrice across your foreheads—blow your noses—cleanse
your emunctories—sneeze, my good people!——God bless you——

Now give me all the help you can.

C H A P. LXXX

AS 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.

The imagery under which Slawkenbergius 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.

“She first, saith Slawkenbergius, 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 Slawkenbergius, for
interrupting me——

“I have nothing, good Lady, but empty bottles;’ says the asse.

“I’m loaded with tripes;” says the second.

——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.

——Of what? for the love of Christ!

I am determined, answered Slawkenbergius, that all the powers upon
earth shall never wring that secret from my breast.

C H A P. LXXXI

WE 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.

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 of that part of the species, for
whose use she is fabricating this——or that her Ladyship sometimes
scarce knows what sort of a husband will do——I know not: we will
discourse about it after supper.

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 Toby’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——

And accordingly * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.

The DONATION was not defeated by my uncle Toby’s wound.

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. Wadman’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 Toby’s Virtue
thereupon into nothing but empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose, and
pantofles.

C H A P. LXXXII

MRS. Bridget 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 postulata in nature: namely, that whilst my uncle Toby
was making love to her mistress, the corporal could find nothing better
to do, than make love to her——“And I’ll let him as much as he will,
said Bridget, to get it out of him.”

Friendship has two garments; an outer and an under one. Bridget 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 Toby’s wound, as the Devil himself——Mrs. Wadman had but
one—and as it possibly might be her last (without discouraging Mrs.
Bridget, or discrediting her talents) was determined to play her
cards herself.

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
ten-ace——and so naked and defenceless did he sit upon the same sopha
with widow Wadman, that a generous heart would have wept to have won
the game of him.

Let us drop the metaphor.

C H A P. LXXXIII

——AND 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.

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 aura of the brain——be it which it will—an Invocation can
do no hurt——and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to
inspire or to inject me according as he sees good.

T H E I N V O C A T I O N

GENTLE Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy pen of
my beloved CERVANTES; 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 Sancho and his master, didst cast thy
mystic mantle o’er his wither’d stump[44], and wide extended it to all
the evils of his life——

——Turn in hither, I beseech thee!——behold these breeches!——they are all
I have in world——that piteous rent was given them at Lyons——

My shirts! see what a deadly schism has happen’d amongst ’em—for the
laps are in Lombardy, and the rest of ’em here—I never had but six,
and a cunning gypsey of a laundress at Milan cut me off the
fore-laps of five—To do her justice, she did it with some
consideration—for I was returning out of Italy.

And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box which was
moreover filch’d from me at Sienna, and twice that I pay’d five Pauls
for two hard eggs, once at Raddicoffini, and a second time at
Capua—I do not think a journey through France and Italy, provided
a man keeps his temper all the way, so bad a thing as some people would
make you believe: there must be ups and downs, 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 Disappointment 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——

——For my uncle Toby’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.

——They were the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I instantly let down
the fore-glass to hear them more distinctly——’Tis Maria; said the
postillion, observing I was listening——Poor Maria, 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.

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 Moulins——

——And who is poor Maria? said I.

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
Maria deserve, than to have her Banns forbid, by the intrigues of the
curate of the parish who published them——

He was going on, when Maria, 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 service upon it almost night and day.

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 Maria taken such full possession of me.

We had got up by this time almost to the bank where Maria 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——

——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.

As the postillion spoke this, MARIA 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.

MARIA 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——

——Well, Maria, said I softly——What resemblance do you find?

I do entreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from the
humblest conviction of what a Beast 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 Rabelais 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.

As for writing nonsense to them——I believe there was a reserve—but that
I leave to the world.

Adieu, Maria!—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.

——What an excellent inn at Moulins!

 [44] He lost his hand at the battle of Lepanto.

C H A P. LXXXIV

WHEN 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——

——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 Zeuxis his horse; besides, I look
upon a chapter which has only nothing in it, with respect; and
considering what worse things there are in the world——That it is no way
a proper subject for satire——

——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
Lernè cast in the teeth of King Garangantan’s shepherds——And I’ll
let them do it, as Bridget 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?

——So I don’t take it amiss——All I wish is, that it may be a lesson to
the world, “to let people tell their stories their own way.”

The Seventy-seventh Chapter

AS Mrs. Bridget opened the door before the corporal had well given
the rap, the interval betwixt that and my uncle Toby’s introduction
into the parlour, was so short, that Mrs. Wadman 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.

My uncle Toby saluted Mrs. Wadman, 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,
“he was in love”——so that my uncle Toby strained himself more in
the declaration than he needed.

Mrs. Wadman naturally looked down, upon a slit she had been darning
up in her apron, in expectation every moment, that my uncle Toby
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. Wadman once that he loved her, he let it alone, and
left the matter to work after its own way.

My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle Toby’s,
as he falsely called it, and would often say, that could his brother
Toby to his processe have added but a pipe of tobacco——he had
wherewithal to have found his way, if there was faith in a Spanish
proverb, towards the hearts of half the women upon the globe.

My uncle Toby 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 French, every one of ’em to
a man, who believe in it, almost as much as the REAL PRESENCE, “That
talking of love, is making it.”

——I would as soon set about making a black-pudding by the same receipt.

Let us go on: Mrs. Wadman sat in expectation my uncle Toby 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 Toby, thus:

The cares and disquietudes of the marriage state, quoth Mrs. Wadman,
are very great. I suppose so—said my uncle Toby: and therefore when a
person, continued Mrs. Wadman, is so much at his ease as you are—so
happy, captain Shandy, in yourself, your friends and your
amusements—I wonder, what reasons can incline you to the state——

——They are written, quoth my uncle Toby, in the Common-Prayer Book.

Thus far my uncle Toby went on warily, and kept within his depth,
leaving Mrs. Wadman to sail upon the gulph as she pleased.

——As for children—said Mrs. Wadman—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 Toby, smit with pity, I know of
none; unless it be the pleasure which it has pleased God——

A fiddlestick! quoth she.

Chapter the Seventy-eighth

NOW there are such an infinitude of notes, tunes, cants, chants, airs,
looks, and accents with which the word fiddlestick may be pronounced
in all such causes as this, every one of ’em impressing a sense and
meaning as different from the other, as dirt from cleanliness—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.

Mrs. Wadman hit upon the fiddlestick, which summoned up all my
uncle Toby’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.

When my uncle Toby had said this, he did not care to say it again; so
casting his eye upon the Bible which Mrs. Wadman 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
Jericho—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.

C H A P. LXXXV

IT is natural for a perfect stranger who is going from London to
Edinburgh, to enquire before he sets out, how many miles to York;
which is about the half way——nor does any body wonder, if he goes on
and asks about the corporation, &c. - -

It was just as natural for Mrs. Wadman, 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.

She had accordingly read Drake’s anatomy from one end to the other.
She had peeped into Wharton upon the brain, and borrowed[45] Graaf
upon the bones and muscles; but could make nothing of it.

She had reason’d likewise from her own powers——laid down
theorems——drawn consequences, and come to no conclusion.

To clear up all, she had twice asked Doctor Slop, “if poor captain
Shandy was ever likely to recover of his wound——?”

——He is recovered, Doctor Slop would say——

What! quite?

Quite: madam——

But what do you mean by a recovery? Mrs. Wadman would say.

Doctor Slop was the worst man alive at definitions; and so Mrs.
Wadman could get no knowledge: in short, there was no way to extract
it, but from my uncle Toby himself.

There is an accent of humanity in an enquiry of this kind which lulls
SUSPICION 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.

“——Was it without remission?—

“——Was it more tolerable in bed?

“——Could he lie on both sides alike with it?

“——Was he able to mount a horse?

“——Was motion bad for it?’ et cætera, were so tenderly spoke to, and
so directed towards my uncle Toby’s heart, that every item of them
sunk ten times deeper into it than the evils themselves——but when Mrs.
Wadman went round about by Namur to get at my uncle Toby’s groin;
and engaged him to attack the point of the advanced counterscarp, and
péle mele with the Dutch to take the counterguard of St. Roch
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. Wadman.

—And whereabouts, dear sir, quoth Mrs. Wadman, a little
categorically, did you receive this sad blow?——In asking this question,
Mrs. Wadman gave a slight glance towards the waistband of my uncle
Toby’s red plush breeches, expecting naturally, as the shortest reply
to it, that my uncle Toby would lay his fore-finger upon the
place——It fell out otherwise——for my uncle Toby having got his wound
before the gate of St. Nicolas, in one of the traverses of the trench
opposite to the salient angle of the demibastion of St. Roch; 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 Toby’s sensorium——and with it, struck his large map of the
town and citadel of Namur 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.

My uncle Toby measured off thirty toises, with Mrs. Wadman’s
scissars, from the returning angle before the gate of St. Nicolas;
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.

Unhappy Mrs. Wadman!

——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 keeping will be but at the trouble to take it with him.

 [45] This must be a mistake in Mr. Shandy; for Graaf wrote upon
 the pancreatick juice, and the parts of generation.

C H A P. LXXXVI

MYy uncle Toby’s Map is carried down into the kitchen.

C H A P. LXXXVII

——AND here is the Maes—and this is the Sambre; said the corporal,
pointing with his right hand extended a little towards the map, and his
left upon Mrs. Bridget’s shoulder—but not the shoulder next him—and
this, said he, is the town of Namur—and this the citadel—and there
lay the French—and here lay his honour and myself——and in this cursed
trench, Mrs. Bridget, quoth the corporal, taking her by the hand, did
he receive the wound which crush’d him so miserably here.——In
pronouncing which, he slightly press’d the back of her hand towards the
part he felt for——and let it fall.

We thought, Mr. Trim, it had been more in the middle,——said Mrs.
Bridget——

That would have undone us for ever—said the corporal.

——And left my poor mistress undone too, said Bridget.

The corporal made no reply to the repartee, but by giving Mrs.
Bridget a kiss.

Come—come—said Bridget—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——

—I know it to be fact, said Bridget, from credible witnesses.

——Upon my honour, said the corporal, laying his hand upon his heart,
and blushing, as he spoke, with honest resentment—’tis a story, Mrs.
Bridget, as false as hell——Not, said Bridget, 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——

It was somewhat unfortunate for Mrs. Bridget, that she had begun the
attack with her manual exercise; for the corporal instantly * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.

C H A P. LXXXVIII

IT was like the momentary contest in the moist eye-lids of an April
morning, “Whether Bridget should laugh or cry.”

She snatch’d up a rolling-pin——’twas ten to one, she had laugh’d——

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 quart
major to a terce at least, better than my uncle Toby, and
accordingly he assailed Mrs. Bridget after this manner.

I know, Mrs. Bridget, 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 Bridget, as is often a woman’s
case, “to please others more than themselves——”

Bridget’s eyes poured down at the sensations the corporal excited.

——Tell me——tell me, then, my dear Bridget, 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?

Bridget 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.

C H A P. LXXXIX

MY uncle Toby 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 Maes or
the Sambre.

My uncle Toby, 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——

The corporal, on his side, in taking Bridget, 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——

——Best of honest and gallant servants!——But I have apostrophiz’d thee,
Trim! once before——and could I apotheosize thee also (that is to say)
with good company——I would do it without ceremony in the very next
page.

C H A P. XC

NOW my uncle Toby 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. Wadman’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, Trim! said he, taking up his pipe again,——bring me a
pen and ink: Trim brought paper also.

Take a full sheet——Trim! said my uncle Toby, 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.

—She has a thousand virtues, Trim! said my uncle Toby——

Am I to set them down, an’ please your honour? quoth the corporal.

——But they must be taken in their ranks, replied my uncle Toby; for
of them all, Trim, 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 Toby, looking up, as he
protested it, towards the top of the ceiling—That was I her brother,
Trim, a thousand fold, she could not make more constant or more
tender enquiries after my sufferings——though now no more.

The corporal made no reply to my uncle Toby’s protestation, but by a
short cough—he dipp’d the pen a second time into the inkhorn; and my
uncle Toby, 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
H U M A N I T Y - - - - thus.

Prithee, corporal, said my uncle Toby, as soon as Trim had done
it——how often does Mrs. Bridget enquire after the wound on the cap of
thy knee, which thou received’st at the battle of Landen?

She never, an’ please your honour, enquires after it at all.

That, corporal, said my uncle Toby, 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. Wadman 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, Trim, is equally excruciating,——and Compassion has
as much to do with the one as the other——

——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
Landen, Mrs. Wadman would have troubled her head as little about it
as Bridget; because, added the corporal, lowering his voice, and
speaking very distinctly, as he assigned his reason——

“The knee is such a distance from the main body——whereas the groin,
your honour knows, is upon the very curtain of the place.”

My uncle Toby gave a long whistle——but in a note which could scarce
be heard across the table.

The corporal had advanced too far to retire——in three words he told the
rest——

My uncle Toby laid down his pipe as gently upon the fender, as if it
had been spun from the unravellings of a spider’s web——

——Let us go to my brother Shandy’s, said he.

C H A P. XCI

THERE will be just time, whilst my uncle Toby and Trim are walking
to my father’s, to inform you that Mrs. Wadman had, some moons before
this, made a confident of my mother; and that Mrs. Bridget, who had
the burden of her own, as well as her mistress’s secret to carry, had
got happily delivered of both to Susannah behind the garden-wall.

As for my mother, she saw nothing at all in it, to make the least
bustle about——but Susannah 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 Jonathan——and Jonathan 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, FAME 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 Toby’s siege, and what were the secret
articles which had delayed the surrender.——

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an
hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he
did——had but just heard of the report as my uncle Toby set out; and
catching fire suddenly at the trespass done his brother by it, was
demonstrating to Yorick, 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 Adam, down to my
uncle Toby’s (inclusive), was owing one way or other to the same
unruly appetite.

Yorick was just bringing my father’s hypothesis to some temper, when
my uncle Toby 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 Toby was seated by the fire,
and had filled his pipe, my father broke out in this manner.

C H A P. XCII

——THAT 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.

I know it will be said, continued my father (availing himself of the
Prolepsis), 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 Diogenes and Plato 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?

——The act of killing and destroying a man, continued my father, raising
his voice—and turning to my uncle Toby—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 scoundrel
cannon, we cast an ornament upon the breach of it.—

——My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to intercede for a better
epithet——and Yorick was rising up to batter the whole hypothesis to
pieces——

——When Obadiah broke into the middle of the room with a complaint,
which cried out for an immediate hearing.

The case was this:

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 Obadiah had led his cow upon a pop-visit 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 Obadiah’s wife was brought to bed—Obadiah thanked God——

——Now, said Obadiah, I shall have a calf: so Obadiah went daily to
visit his cow.

She’ll calve on Monday—on Tuesday—on Wednesday at the farthest——

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 Obadiah’s
suspicions (like a good man’s) fell upon the Bull.

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.

——Most of the townsmen, an’ please your worship, quoth Obadiah,
believe that ’tis all the Bull’s fault——

——But may not a cow be barren? replied my father, turning to Doctor
Slop.

It never happens: said Dr. Slop, but the man’s wife may have come
before her time naturally enough——Prithee has the child hair upon his
head?—added Dr. Slop——

——It is as hairy as I am; said Obadiah.——Obadiah had not been shaved
for three weeks——Wheu - - u - - - - u - - - - - - - - cried my father;
beginning the sentence with an exclamatory whistle——and so, brother
Toby, this poor Bull of mine, who is as good a Bull as ever p—ss’d,
and might have done for Europa 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 Toby, is the very same thing
as his life——

L—d! said my mother, what is all this story about?——

A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick——And one of the best of its kind, I
ever heard.

END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME




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